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Trajectory

Beirut (Lebanon), 1952

Perhaps one of the most representative artists of the international art scene, Mona Hatoum's biography embodies the constants entailed by the traumatic experience of exile: the uprooting and destruction of the traditional idea we have of "home".

Although Palestinian, she was born in Beirut, the city to which her parents had do emigrate in 1948 when they left Haifa, and to which she herself was unable to return when, during a trip to London, the 1975 Lebanese civil war broke out. After a first few years at the Byam Shaw School of Art, she transferred to the Slade School of Art, where she studied with Stuart Brisley, one of her first influences during the early 80s when she started producing performances and videos.

After an initial phase of formal experimentation where she established what would be a long-standing involvement with minimalism, she became politically active during her time at Slade and entered a more conceptual realm in which her foremost concern was the mechanisms of power structures. In this context, the majority of her performances were loaded with political content. Following this period, although still pertaining to this first stage in which her work is characterised by temporal actions, she produces videos, including significant works such as Measures of Distance (1988), which addresses themes such as the representation of feminine stereotypes or mother-daughter relationships, yet still within a framework of the feelings of loss and disorientation resulting from exile and communication from situations of displacement.

In the 90s, her work evolved toward less narrative pieces that consequently allowed for a greater degree of association. Through sculpture and installations, Hatoum produced works that seemed to refer to minimalism, albeit only from a purely formal point of view and from the use of materials. In these artworks, there is a continuous negotiation with the spectator's body, which is physically and emotionally involved in a space where, paradoxically, the human body is absent and where she/he is called upon as substitute by way of her/his presence. Her installations often take us into a fantasy space in which, as happens in Corps étranger (1994), we are confronted with the metaphorical power of the body in general through concepts such as public and private in imagery of the female body.

In recent years, the symbolic ambivalence she confers on everyday objects has taken on more and more significance in her installations. Everything we had supposedly taken for granted and felt comforted by has metamorphosed into something remote and often even horrifying. The "home" in Hatoum's works can no longer afford that sensation of peace and shelter with which we used to associate it. The alterations introduced by the artist constantly crush those expectations. We are left with nothing but a disturbing space in which to redefine the word "home". M. M. R.