The Many Contradictions of Mona Hatoum

posted on: Jul 8, 2015

Mona Hatoum was vacationing in London in 1975 when civil war broke out back home in Lebanon. With Beirut’s airport closed for nine months, she found herself cut off from her family and on her own at age 23.

“I was stuck in London,” the British-Palestinian artist said in an interview here late last month. “It didn’t feel lucky at the time, because I was feeling miserable, but also supporting myself, and having to get used to the cold weather.”

That extended holiday proved a pivotal twist of fate. Ms. Hatoum settled in London and, after a few years of doing odd jobs and living “hand to mouth,” as she put it, graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1981. By 1994, she had a career-altering mini-exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris, and in 1995 was short-listed for the Turner Prize.

Now, Ms. Hatoum has a solo show of 110 works at the Pompidou, her biggest and most prominent exhibition yet. (It runs through Sept. 28 and travels to Tate Modern in London in May 2016. A smaller, unrelated show opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston on Aug. 26.) The nonchronological display includes quietly disturbing installations featuring cages and grids, barbed wire, domestic objects, maps and strands of her hair. Her work is inspired by minimalism, Surrealism and conceptual art. It occasionally also evokes her Palestinian roots, leading some to see Middle Eastern connections in everything she does, to her lingering displeasure.

Source: www.nytimes.com