Unearthing Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum, ‘Cellules’ [Cells], 2012-2013
mild steel and blown glass
in 8 parts
170 cm x variable depth and width[1]
170 cm x variable depth and width[1]
Cells
is an ideal work as a starting point to discuss the underlying themes and
concerns of Mona Hatoum’s body of work. The first noticeable characteristic of
this work is the title, Cells which
has multiple meanings depending on the context. When used in relation to natural
biology it refers to the smallest unit of life and the essence of life,
whereas, when used in relation to something man-made it is the institutionalised
structure of a confined space often symbolising oppression, entrapment, restriction
to movement, and indifference to the individual – for example, a prison cell. The
“blood cells” in Hatoum’s work are of different shapes and seem to slump and
ooze against the indifferent metal, resembling unique, individual organic
beings apparently held as prisoners. The blood cells are made of glass, a
fragile material representing the vulnerability of the human body, especially
in contrast to the sturdy metal of the cages, representing the inherent
violence of oppressive structures. It is hence the juxtaposition of the organic
and the man-made structure that characterises this work, which is essentially
about the conflict in the interaction between the individual body and
institutional forces.
This idea, of the individual versus
the institution, the personal at odds with the political, forms the basis and
the main motivation for most of Mona Hatoum’s work. Hatoum’s repertoire is a
diverse, unusual and often inter-disciplinary practice ranging from
performance, video, sculpture, photography, and drawings, intermingling corporeal
and political concerns. In her sculptures and installations, the range of materials
she chooses to use is wide: from industrial materials such as metal, electricity,
glass, rubber and plastic, to more domestic items such as fabrics and soap,
furniture and cutlery, and disposable items, even corporeal such as hair.
Hatoum’s aesthetic vocabulary is one in which commonplace, familiar objects and
settings are imbued with an unfamiliar and sometimes menacing attitude evoking
a sense of alienation. This could be likened to the aesthetic language of the
Surrealists, which as Hatoum herself stated[2],
were an influence for her, along with elements of Minimalism and conceptual art.
This essay will touch on a brief
introduction to the artist, followed by focusing on selected pieces of video,
sculpture and installation by Hatoum, and explore how her work conveys the
notion of the confrontation between the individual and the institution, with a
strong focus on the body as reference point. It will also touch on the echoes
of Minimalism in her installation work, and how she indeed extends the
Minimalist style by imbuing it with psychological and political depth, drawing
the viewer in by their bodily interaction and engagement with the piece. As art
theorist Amelia Jones writes, “body art practices solicit rather than distance
the spectator, drawing her or him into the work of art as an intersubjective
exchange.”[3]
I would argue that this emphasis on
intersubjective exchange through bodily engagement is precisely what makes Hatoum’s
work succeed compellingly.
Hatoum was born in 1952 to
Palestinian parents who had been exiled to Beirut. During what was meant to be
a temporary visit to London in 1975, civil war in Beirut forced Hatoum to go
into exile in the United Kingdom, separated from her family in Lebanon. This
personal narrative of “double exile” naturally imbues Hatoum’s work with themes
of alienation, displacement, and powerlessness in the face of larger political
forces.
Her career began with visceral
performance art in the 1980’s. Her crucial point of reference since the
beginning was always the body, often her own:
“For me, the embodiment of an
artwork is within the physical realm; the body is the axis of our perceptions,
so how can art afford not to take that as a starting point? We relate to the
world through our senses. You first experience an artwork physically. I like
the work to operate on both sensual and intellectual levels.”[4]
It was in the 1990s when she began
to create installations with emphasis on their spatial construction. Since the
beginning of the 1990s, she was increasingly working on large-scale
installations that clearly intend to involve the viewer as a participant in the
work for her or him to experience the sense of alienation and disorientation. In a later interview Hatoum
states, “I wanted the viewer’s body to replace mine by interacting directly
with the work. My work always constructed with the viewer in mind. The viewer
is somehow implicated or even visually or psychologically entrapped in some of
the installations.”[5]
Sculpture
Mouli-Julienne (x21) (2000)
Dormiente (2008)
Mouli-Julienne (x21) (2000) and Dormiente (2008) are examples
of some of Hatoum’s particularly intriguing sculptural work, that succeeds in
confronting and instilling physical tension in the viewer with a surreal
simulation of a terrifying and overarching structure of violence by subverting
ordinary household items such as the vegetable slicer and the grater into
larger-than-life instruments seemingly of torture. It also subverts the
connotation of home or the domestic sphere as one of safety and comfort, instead
instilling the idea of home with connotations of uncertainty and fear, alluding
again to Hatoum’s experience of being displaced from her original home by the
violence present therein. Another sociopolitical reading related to power
structures could be that the sinister renderings of the domestic tools
symbolise the oppressiveness of traditional roles of the woman which Margaret
Thatcher encouraged (as Hatoum lived under her government in the 1980’s).
Although these sculptural works can stand alone, it is necessary for the
viewer’s body to be present in psychological engagement with the piece in order
for the impact of the work to be fulfilled.
Homebound (2000)
A similar work is Homebound (2000),
where Hatoum assembles an network of furniture that is connected wired up and
connected to an electrical current, evoking once again a sense of paranoia
linked to the idea of home rather than one of comfort.
Video
Screencap from Measures of Distance
(1998)
Perhaps Hatoum’s most significant
and poignant video work is Measures of Distance (1998), one of the works that
is informed directly by her personal narrative. It conveys themes of
displacement and family ties strained by distance imposed by political forces
beyond the power of individuals. It is a fifteen-minute-long piece consisting
of photographs taken by Hatoum of her mother taking a bath. The photographs are
superimposed with letters that her mother wrote to her, about the political
turmoil ongoing in Lebanon, during their period of separation while Hatoum was
exiled in London. The audio of the piece is Hatoum reading aloud the letters in
Arabic and English so as to facilitate the accessibility of the work for most
Western, English-speaking viewers. Instead of displaying journalistic or
documentary depictions of the Lebanese civil war, Hatoum focuses the work on
the poignant impact the political turmoil has on her relationships. This was in
retaliation to what Hatoum perceived as an inaccurate depiction of Arabs by
Western media and the work intended to counter the implicit stereotypes “of
Arab woman as passive, mother as non-sexual being.”[6]
The significance of the body is hence
important in this piece – specifically that of Hatoum’s mother in the personal
space of the bath – lending the piece a sense of intimacy that is at odds with
the description of the events in Lebanon.
Hatoum’s video work also explores a preoccupation with
surveillance by an unknown and faceless authority figure. This is represented
in Corps étranger: a cylinder lined with soft black fabric where videos
and images are project depicting an endoscopy on Hatoum’s own body. She
presents this endoscopy as the ultimate infringement of personal privacy by an
external power figure. The videos were projected on the floor, through a black
cylinder, which may be read as a sexual metaphor or symbolising the irrational
fear of a woman’s body. Once again, the method of presenting the video work is
intended to be confrontational to the viewer. By titling the pieces Corps étranger, Hatoum alludes to a body that cannot be seen or cannot be
visible enough to assert itself during the violence imposed upon it by the
other foreign body – of the camera. On the other hand, the anonymity of the
filmed body could be an intentional gesture to imply a universality, to
encourage the viewer to project their own body onto the video, to identify
themselves with it and thereby to empathise with the plight of oppressed
bodies.
Similar video works exploring,
sometimes with a humorous and ironic tone, the body experiencing violation by surveillance,
are Look No Body! and Don’t Smile, you’re on camera (1980)
which both reveal an early interest in engaging the viewer almost
confrontationally, almost violently, in the experience of being subjected to
surveillance.
Installations
Hatoum began working on installation by 1989. Her
installation work often coerces the participant to enter into a re-enactment of
the dynamic between the individual and the violence of institution. These are
best epitomised by the works The Light at
the End (1989), and Quarters
(1996).
The Light at the End
(1989)
For example, in her 1989 work The Light at the End, a darkened area in a gallery in London
contained a cage-like structure of six bright, hot electrical rods. The
participant is drawn to the light, but is prevented from going further by the
strong heat of the structure. The title of the work is obviously ironic, its
usual optimistic connotation subverted by the evocation of “imprisonment,
torture and pain,” as Hatoum herself commented.[7] In
terms of visual form the style is clearly of Minimalist influence, bringing to
mind the gentler lights of Dan Flavin. However, Hatoum extends the formal
aesthetics to speak of the conditions under which the body of the socially
oppressed endures.[8] Hal
Foster describes the installation as one where “spatial positions become
phantasmatic positions of power as well. … here the threat
often projected onto Minimalist objects became actual.”
Hatoum thus imbues the Minimalist aesthetic with the philosophy of Michel
Foucault, and was especially drawn to his analysis of architectural
surveillance in Discipline and Punish. Of course, this work is a precursor to
the aforementioned Homebound (2000) with the use of electricity as a
threatening and violent element of the work.
She further explored this situation with Light Sentence (1992),
a large structure of lockers made of wire mesh with a strong lightbulb, similar
to bright lights used in prisons, at the centre moving up and down, casting
sinister moving shadows on the wall. Hatoum herself points out this is intended
to create an unsettling feeling in the viewer.[9] The
title alludes to legal terminology and the structures appear cage-like. There
is a sense of “instability and restlessness” which she admits is informed by
her past experiences – the unpredictable and threatening figure of an unseeable
authority force of power, casting looming shadows all around.
Quarters (1996)
In Quarters (1996), as with previous work where objects
associated with domestic comfort are subverted, a series of stacked-up beds
stripped of mattresses and fabric stands bare. Despite the presence of several
beds the work does not offer the viewer any sense of comfort that beds usually
do, and as Hatoum no doubt intends, the viewer moves from visceral discomfort,
to an intellectual understanding and empathy for bodies that have experienced
oppression under indifferent power structures – such as those prevalent in
wars, in medical or psychiatric institutions, where despite the provision of
beds there is no rest to be found.
In all of the work explored in this essay, Hatoum invites
the participant to a visceral experience of her pieces and the underlying idea
of conflict between the individual and larger sociopolitical structures or
menacing power systems. The participant is forced to feel these ideas through
their immediate senses, and only then to process it intellectually. She calls
for the participant’s bodily involvement first. Even when Hatoum expresses
herself via her own body, such as in Corps
étranger, it is intended to be a kind of analogy for a generic body that is
subjected to the power and violence of another (person or institution). The
artist intends for the participant to identify their body with this generic
body, allowing the participant to empathise with the fact that any body can be
a subject to a larger oppressive structure, and every body is.
Bibliography
Archer, Michael, Guy Brett, M. Catherine De. Zegher, and
Mona Hatoum. Mona Hatoum. London: Phaidon, 1997. Print.
Grosenick, Uta, and Ilka Becker. Women Artists in the 20th
and 21st Century. Köln: Taschen, 2001. Print.
Jones, Amelia. Body Art/performing the Subject. Minneapolis:
U of Minnesota, 1998. Print.
Mona Hatoum, exhibition catalogue, Museo d'Arte
Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Milan 1999, pp.11-12
"Mona Hatoum by Janine Antoni." Interview by
Janine Antoni. BOMB - Artists in Conversation. BOMB Magazine, Spring 1998. Web.
Wagstaff, Sheena. “Uncharted Territories: New Perspectives
in the Art Mona
Hatoum.” Mona Hatoum: The Entire World as Foreign Land.
London:
Tate Gallery, 2000.
[2] "Mona Hatoum by Janine Antoni." Interview by Janine
Antoni. BOMB - Artists in Conversation.
BOMB Magazine, Spring 1998. Web.
[4] Archer, Michael, Guy Brett, M. Catherine De. Zegher, and Mona
Hatoum. Mona Hatoum. London: Phaidon,
1997. Print.
[5] "Mona Hatoum by Janine Antoni." Interview by Janine
Antoni. BOMB - Artists in Conversation. BOMB Magazine, Spring 1998. Web.
[6] Mona
Hatoum, exhibition catalogue, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli,
Milan 1999, pp.11-12
[7] As quoted in Foster,
Hal. Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. New York: Thames
& Hudson, 2007. Print.
[8]
Wagstaff, Sheena. “Uncharted Territories: New Perspectives in the Art Mona
Hatoum.” Mona Hatoum: The Entire World as Foreign Land.
London:
Tate Gallery, 2000.
[9] ("Mona Hatoum by Janine Antoni." Interview by Janine
Antoni. BOMB - Artists in Conversation. BOMB Magazine, Spring 1998. Web.)
