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Mona Hatoum

Citizen of the World

   

 

Mona Hatoum is currently showing more then hundred of her works in Tate Britain, that are result of thirty-five years of art practice and consist of sculptures and installations, videos and photography. She is a Lebanese born Palestinian, an immigrant at young age in western world and one of the most prominent female artist today.

Her work , minimalistic in form and beautiful in expression is influenced by her heritage, exile experience, mix of culture and feminine view with poetic and political components.

Mona's earlier works of performance art were highly political and charged with tension, presents of danger and ongoing struggle. Lately, she is mainly creating installations and always introducing uncomfortable tension by combining contradicting materials, like wiring household items with electricity or just by using conceptually charged materials, like industrial wire.

Large formations made of wire, beautifully constructed and when exposed to moving light, emit strong unsettling sense of containment and oppression and moving threatening shadows.

“I want the work in the first instance to have a strong formal presence, and through the physical experience to activate a psychological and emotional res“I want the work in the first instance to have a strong formal presence, and through the physical experience to activate a psychological and emotional response. In a very general sense I want to create a situation where reality itself becomes a questionable point.

 Where one has to reassess their assumptions and their relationship to things around them. A kind of self-examination and an examination of the power structures that control us: Am I the jailed or the jailer? The oppressed or the oppressor? Or both. I want the work to complicate these positions and offer an ambiguity and ambivalence rather than concrete and sure answers. An object from a distance might look like a carpet made out of lush velvet, but when you approach it you realize it’s made out of stainless steel pins which turns it into a threatening and cold object rather than an inviting one. It’s not what it promises to be. So it makes you question the solidity of the ground you walk on, which is also the basis on which your attitudes and beliefs lie.”

When her work is not political or confrontational, it can be very feminine and sensual like heartfelt video recording of her mum's letter in Arabic.

       Red globe, Hot spot , does not need much explanation or interpretation. She often used red colour as a political statement in combination with metal, however , this time she addressed global situation in a very straightforward way, with universal language and true citizen of the World.

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