ART-PRESENTATION: Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum, Hot Spot, 2013, © Mona Hatoum, Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje MykkänenBorn in Beirut in 1952 to Palestinian parents, Mona Hatoum was on a short visit to London in 1975 when the Lebanese civil war broke out. Unable to return, she attended art schools in London. She began her artistic career creating performance and video works in which the body gave expression to a divided reality, besieged by political and social control. Since the early ‘90s she began to focus on making sculptures and large-scale installations.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Kiasma Archive

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma presents a large scale exhibition devoted to Mona Hatoum, she is well known for her large-scale installations and sculptures which challenge the formal languages of minimalism and surrealism to expose a world characterised by conflicts and contradictions. She began her career in the 1980s with performance and video works in which the body gave expression to a divided reality, besieged by political and social control. In the video “Roadworks” (1985), she documents a performance where she walked barefoot through the streets of Brixton with a pair of Doc Marten boots tied to her ankles. The body has always been central to Hatoum’s work and she is known for referencing its vulnerability and resilience, as exemplified by “Corps étranger” (1994), an endoscopic journey through the interior and exterior landscape of the artist’s own body. Her installations also situate the body as subject to power or incarceration, evident in “Impenetrable” (2009), a suspended square formed of hundreds of delicate rods of suspended barbed wire, and the iconic “Light Sentence” (1992). In this work, walls of industrial wire mesh lockers and a single moving lightbulb create dramatic shadows that transform the gallery into a disorientating and unstable place. Furniture and other familiar objects feature prominently in her work, often modified and scaled up, to explore the fine line between the familiar and the uncanny. “Homebound” (2000), for example, consists of an assemblage of kitchen utensils and household furniture connected by electric wire, through which runs an audible electric current. Hatoum’s work highlights the condition of displacement, shared by many in the modern era. “Present Tense” (1996) is made from 2,200 cubes of traditional olive oil soap from Nablus, a city north of Jerusalem. Lines of tiny red glass beads pushed into the surface depict the map of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord between Israel and the Palestinian Authorities. In the installation “Twelve Windows” (2012-13), comprising twelve pieces of embroidery made by Palestinian women living in refugee camps in Lebanon, embroidery becomes an act of resistance.

Info: Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, Helsinki, Duration: 7/10/16-26/2617, Days & Hours: Tue & Sun 10:00-17:00, Wed-Fri 10:00-20:30, Sat 10:00-18:00, www.kiasma.fi

Mona Hatoum, Light Sentence, 1992, Photo Petri Virtanen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, Light Sentence, 1992, Photo: Petri Virtanen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Mona Hatoum, Home, 1999, Photo: Petri Virtanen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, Home, 1999, Photo: Petri Virtanen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Mona Hatoum, Map (clear), 2015, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, Map (clear), 2015, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Mona Hatoum, + and -, 1994–2004, Hall Collection, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, + and -, 1994–2004, Hall Collection, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Mona Hatoum, Keffieh, 1993–99, Collection agnes b.-Paris, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, Keffieh, 1993–99, Collection agnes b.-Paris, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Mona Hatoum, Cellules, 2012–13, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel-Paris, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, Cellules, 2012–13, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel-Paris, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Left: Mona Hatoum, Hot Spot, 2013, © Mona Hatoum, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery. Right: Mona Hatoum, Untitled (wheelchair II), 1999, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery
Left: Mona Hatoum, Hot Spot, 2013, © Mona Hatoum, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery. Right: Mona Hatoum, Untitled (wheelchair II), 1999, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery

 

 

Mona Hatoum, Undercurrent (red), 2008, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery
Mona Hatoum, Undercurrent (red), 2008, Photo: Pirje Mykkänen, Finnish National Gallery