Mona Hatoum: A look at the general policy in detail

Mona Hatoum and the airy heights of the art world

Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut in Lebanon . As a child of Palestinian parents who lived in Israel, but had to flee to Lebanon in 1948 because of the war situation before the state of Israel was founded. Palestinian areas, Lebanon, Israel - Mona Hatoum was born in the middle of a Middle East conflict, which was a few decades old at the time of her birth.

The Middle East conflict should get even older, and Mona Hatoum (in his form "Civil War in Lebanon", 1975) lead from her "exile home" to a life in the west (London) at a young age. With short interruptions - around the turn of the millennium, around a dozen peace initiatives gave rise to hope for a pacification of the conflict stove Middle East region, which has quickly been dealt with with three wars in the Gaza strip - the riots in Mona Hatoum birth region still ferment.

To this day, art science is trying with similarly short interruptions, the artist and her work in a sense of meaning for force with the Middle East conflict, typical headings/first lines of publications about Mona HatouM Loud "Mona Hatoum: A Woman, A Palestinian, A Native of Beirut" , "Lebanese-Born Artist, Mona Hatoum" , "HatouM was a family of family of Palestinian Refugees ” , “ Lebanese-Born Artist, Mona Hatoum ” and so on.

Mona Hatoum is rather annoyed by these steady and stubborn efforts. The artist defines herself as a Palestinian-British artist , the Lebanon is simply the country in which she grew up and no longer. Hatoum has lived outside the conflict zone since the age of 23, especially in London and for several years in Berlin, and her art is more into the world than to the Middle East conflict .

It fits that ranked very high in the world rankings of art Currently in place No. 41.

Mona Hatoum has been classified as one of the leading artists in our world for a while, among the 50 best “artists in the world” she has been moving over a decade. With a slight zigzag course depending on the activity and success of the audience-2005 No. 30, 2007 45, 2010 35, 2013 41, 2016 44, 41-but always at rather airy heights of recognition of the art-interested world.

Every connoisseur knows this HatouM work: Mona Hatoums "mud fight"

Mona Hatoum presented one of her most important works of art immediately after completing her training at the Slade School of Art 1982: the performance "under Siege" (under siege), in which Mona Hatoum found an impressive and obvious symbolistics for the helplessness of the individual towards war drivers and war.

Hatoum fights with loamy mud for seven hours, as well as even prevalent masses, as they were pushed back. Here is a sketch of the development of performance:

reactfeminism.org.

Your fight takes place in a transparent cube. Just like the civilian population, which is bluseless in today's wars, with the view into peace areas, without the chance to ever be able to reach them. The viewer is also caught in his role as a helpless witness without the possibility of influence.

34 years later, in 2016, a brand new performance for all people who are affected by the grotesque failure of modern civil societies. Or are not yet affected, but because of their increasing horror about the current developments have already been brought to quiet sleep.

The statements in Hatoum in accompanying the performance are a brand new statement on the "refugee crisis" of our day :

Many works of art Mona Hatoumen meet similarly decisive statements; Against war, oppression, fraud, for humanity. Some of these works of art are presented briefly, but as always, the departure for self -discovery is absolutely worthwhile.

Mona Hatoum's training as an artist: life in exile, art instead of war

Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut in 1952, grew up there and graduated from Beirut University College in 1972.

The youthful Mona Hatoum is said to have already shown interest in art/art. It is known that Hatoum spent her childhood characteristic, every school booklet from the volume of poems to scientific recording was decorated and illustrated.

When she was on a trip to London in 1975, the civil war broke out in Lebanon. The way home was blocked overnight, Mona Hatoum stayed in London and began to seriously deal with art and "learning art": From 1975 to 1979 she took courses at the BYAM SHAW School of Art, an independent art school founded in 1910 (in 2003 in Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design of the University of the Arts London).

From 1979 to 1981 Hatoum completed her artistic training through studying at the Slade School of Art , as an art school at the University College London one of the most important British art training centers. The Slade School of Art is also recognized internationally as a leader, among the graduates are artists from Douglas Gordon, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Derek Jarman and famous personalities with artificial professions such as interior designers and designer Eileen Gray, co -founder of the Moma Mary Quinn Sullivan and art historian John Richardson.

Visit to the artist's studio

Even as a student, 1981, Hatoums staged her first performance "Look No Body!" , in which HatouM puts her thoughts on publicly accepted and unaccepted body openings into a small toilet show: The audience was allowed to look at Hatoum on a monitor in (multiple) use of the toilet equipped with a camera and was informed by tape recording about the scientific details of urination. There was a lot of water to drink, for HatouM and the audience, whether toilets were also available for this, has not been handed down.

In 1982 the eternal mud fight "Under Siege" followed, with which Mona Hatoum became known almost overnight.

Current works

Clear messages: by body, gestures, composition and film

After Mona Hatoum had won the Avantgarde art world's attention "Under Siege"

In 1983 the artist presented herself blood stained in the "Negotiating Table Performance" and covered with intestines for hours on an imaginary negotiating table. In a darkened room, which is only illuminated by a light bulb. With news about the civil war in Lebanon and Peace speeches, political leaders of the causes and yet largely uninvolved west in the background, which usually reveal the negotiations inherent.

"So Much I Want to Say" from 1983 is a short black and white video with individual statues from the face of a woman, whose mouth is constantly being the sentence "So Much I Want To Say".

Between 1980 and 1988 Mona Hatoum had a lot more to say, transmitted in around 35 performances. Mona Hatoum performed entirely in the classic tradition: her performances ran as non-archivable moment events, which were geared towards always very different, but direct communication with the audience. There is not always a complete tradition via video recording, often the posterity can only understand what is happening based on descriptions, sketches, individual images.

At the end of the 1980s, sculptures, videos and space -filling installations were added:

In the video "Measures of Distance", Mona Hatoum in 1988 shows still pictures of her mother (under the shower, including the most effective breasts), passed on by the Arabic lettering of a maternal letter that the artist reads in Arabic and English translation.

In the video, the inexperienced recipient sees processing of Hatoum's lonely early days in London: a young woman completely alone in a sometimes contraryly contraryly new cultural environment, while her family is in mortal danger in a country. This interpretation is granted to the inexperienced recipient by art science almost without a dispute.

But not considered exhaustive. If you enjoy reading long scientific discussions that interpret the theoretical and practical background of a work of art to the last small (un) possibility, the scientific literature on "Measures of Distance" is recommended.

Everything is included: reference to the biography of the artist, family gang, distance and intimacy and female sexuality, mother-daughter relationship and father-daughter relationship and father-mother relationship (sorry, mother-father relationship), where we are in the process of feminism , color theories about the presentation and coloring of the colors of water (shower), war history and criticism of psychology, Psychology for the symbol of shower images as a placeholder for warlike conflicts, Arabic letters as barbed wire that holds the woman in the shower (HatouM mother) ...

In 1994 the space -filling installation "Moutons" . For which the artist collected her curls out of the brush for six years, rolled up and archived in a cardboard box until she had the 145 balls for installation together. A collector about this work of art: "I see the religious punishment of the woman in it, a say goodbye to the woman's die .

Also in 1994 Mona Hatoum filmed her body surface for the video installation "Corps Etranger" and then her body openings, also from the inside. At that time, such film recordings were still able to attract attention at the Venice Biennale (1995), and the video installation even helped her to nominate the Turner Prize , the most important art prize in Great Britain.

A little later, Hatoum was able to use individual recordings of "Corps Etranger" for another work of art, namely her comment on the best -known porn film of all time, "Deep Throat" from 1972: In Mona Hatoum "Deep Throat " from 1996, the insatiable, greedy throat has already worked out passion during and for sex and had enough money to live out the greed during food in fine restaurants.

Mona Hatoum has worked out the physical first and turns to the surrounding area:

1996 with the sculpture "Divan Bed" , in which soft things are only apparently soft and the reality is very hard; 1998 with the (Untitled) Wheelchair, a wheelchair made of steel with handles in the form of knives.

In 1999 the space-filling installation "Home" , which shows Hatoum's excellent instinct for the development of things: At the turn of the millennium, the kitchen was still a place of security, but Mona Hatoum was already the kitchen as precisely the environmentally polluted and acute lifelong electronic collection, to which many of our kitchens have developed in recent years.

From here for you to discover, it goes z. B. around "Hot Spots" (2009) and "Natura Morta" (2012), and for a precise look and appreciative nod and the idea "How right it is!" .

Mona Hatoum all over the world, until today

Until now (July 2016), works Mona Hatoumen have been seen 70 solo exhibitions and fabulous 600 group exhibitions Most of them in the USA (125), followed by Germany (88), Great Britain (75), France (51) and Italy (50).

Mona Hatoum can look back on an impressive number of awards and prices :

• 1990-1993: Member of the Artist 'Film and Video Committee of the Arts Council of England
• 1995: Nomination for the Turner Prize
• 1997: Honorary membership of Dartington College of Arts, Devon (England)
• 1998: Award with the title of Visiting Professor at Chelsea College + Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London
• 2000: George Maciunas Prize of the city of Wiesbaden
• 2004: Roswitha Legking Prize of the foundation of the same name in Zurich
• 2004: Sonning Prize at the University of Copenhagen
• 2007: scholarship holder at Dartington College of Arts
• 2008: Bellagio Creative Artist Fellowship, London
• 2008: Honor Doctor of the American University of Beirut
• 2008: Rolf Schock Prize, Stockholm
• 2010: Appeal to the Academy of Arts, Berlin
• 2010: Käthe-Kollwitz Prize
• 2012: Joan-Miró Prize of Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona for "her great ability to combine personal experience with universal values"

Mona Hatoum lives in London and Berlin today. In Berlin she is represented by the Max Hetzler gallery , in London from the White Cube gallery , and here: Tate.org.uk you will learn more about the current solo exhibition in the Tate Modern .

Art by Mona Hatoum can currently be seen seven exhibitions in five countries

• until August 14, 2016 "Imperfect Chronology: Mapping the Contemporary I", Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
• until 21 August 2016 "Mona Hatoum", Tate Modern, London
• until August 28, 2016 "Connected", Central for Contemporary Art, Brussels, Belgium
• until September 18, 2016 "Invisible Adversaries: Marieluise Hessel Collection", Hessel Museum of Art & Center for Curatorial Studies Galleries at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, USA
• until September 25, 2016 "The 1980s, Today, S starting?", Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands
• until September 25, 2016 "Seing Round Corners: The Art of the Circle", Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent, UK
• until October 23, 2016 "The Dark Side of the Moon. The abyss in the art of Albrecht Dürer to Martin Disler", Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, St. Gallen

46 public collections preserve Mona Hatoum work for the future and for every citizen:

• Australia: Queensland Art Gallery - Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane QLD
• Belgium: Frédéric de Goldschmidt Collection Brussels
• Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebæk, Arken Museum for Modern Art Ishoj
• Germany: Ludwig Forum for International Art Aachen, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Goetz Munich Collection
• France: Frac Picardie Amiens, Frac des Pays de la Loire Carquefou, Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris, Fondation Francès Senlis
• Greece: National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens
• Israel: The Israel Museum Jerusalem
• Japan: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa
• Canada: The Banff Center Walter Phillips Gallery Banff, National Gallery of Canada Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada Ottawa on, Art gallery of Ontario Toronto on, Vancouver Art gallery vancouver BC
• Mexico: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca
• Netherlands: de Vleeshal Middelburg
• Norway: Astrup Fearnley Museet for Modern Art Oslo
• Palestinian autonomous areas: Birzeit University Museum Birzeit West Jordanland
• Portugal: Ellipse Foundation Alcoitão
• Spain: Centro de Artes Visuales Helga de Alvear Cáceres, Fundación Telefónica Madrid, Da2 Domus Artium 2002 Salamanca, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea Santiago de Compostela
• Sweden: Magasin 3 Stockholm, Kunsthalle Stockholm
• USA: Hessel Museum of Art & Center for Curatorial Studies Galleries at Bard College Annandale-On-Hudson NY, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston Boston Ma, Museum of Fine Arts Boston Ma, Albright-Knox Art Gallery Buffalo Ny, The Warehouse Dallas Tx, Sheldon Museum of Art Lincoln ne, Los Angeles County Museum of Art + Moca Grand Avenue Los Angeles CA, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation Miami Fl, Museum of Modern Art New York City NY, The Fabric Workshop and Museum Philadelphia Pa, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art San Francisco Ca, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Washington DC
• United Kingdom: Tate Liverpool, The David Roberts Art Foundation + Tate Britain + The Arts Gallery University of the Arts London, Manchester Art Gallery

Mona Hatoum's art as an inspiring outlook into the future

Mona Hatoum creates art with a concrete inclusion of her body , which is used as an instrument of clarification without any breath: Hatoum shows the (own) body of how institutional violence affects people.

Especially with "Look No Body!" , "Under Siege" , "So Much I Want to Say" , "Corps Etranger" and "Deep Throat" she created works that do not allow the viewer to withdraw from purely intellectual reception, but rather emotionally include emotionally.

Mona Hatoum works have a clear political dimension , because of which her art is very common and repeatedly reduced "art of the Arabic-Israeli conflict"

Wrongly, as the artist repeatedly emphasized in interviews. Mona Hatoum's art is of course political. Her origin and the circumstances of her birth did not give her the chance from the outset in the "ours-ged-to-all-and-all-and-the-not-good-gute-gift-geeht-geeht-not-to-dran-sind" mentality, which has already caused the death of some democracy at the moment in the western world completely frightening blossoms drives).

Mona Hatoum does not limited her statement to "national political palestinity" or "national political English views" or any views of any politically active groups, but is political, without being partisan.

Always in view the one that matters: the people, the citizens of the states where it lies to form peaceful civil societies. HatouM shows people where they can act and have to act ("Measures of distance" and the migrations of the world) and where they are so powerless that they have to act in order to become the carriers of the democratic decisions that make their representatives for them ("The Negotiating Table" and the war of this world).

Typical for your work is the repeatedly hidden ambiguity. B. indicates hidden exercise of power to humans, as in "Home" (by gaining gain than the production of secure and sensible products, self -obliged electrical industry).

In "Divan Bed" the supposedly comfortable form is actually a tough threat to the buyer, the "Untitled (Wheelchair)" in reality violates the needy instead of supporting him (an experience that the chronically ill, which is dependent on aid, you have to take the place of the knife armrests in dealing with our health systems and then approved a help. Set), in Natura Morta, the supposedly decorative content of the closet turns out to be a fatal threat with a closer view of the "decoration" ...

Mona Hatoum Werk presents ideas in several directions of how people can deal with madness in the world:

The first step is the pure illustration of deceptive politicians, parasitic companies, products (in many parts of the world, unfortunately also of the terrible), of all for everyone. With a clear name of the deception, the refusal to work, the failure to provide assistance and not withdrawn in the sense of a "I-report-NUR-Journalism", which is currently spreading.

German journalism, for example, has been oversetting for at least the turn of the millennium that in its very own work area of ​​the reporting conveyed by media, less to many with the global network has arisen a new medium, which has access to everyone from the basic idea.

Everyone, the reporting citizen, has been and is understood by many press companies as a competition that the competence is denied as contemptuously as possible about their own, direct living environment.

Instead of being happy about the new opportunities revolutionary for "the information of the world", to be presented immediately, to invent a variety of new formats in which the citizens can support the media in reporting about the world ...

Smart citizens resent it in the long run if they are considered stupid or sold as stupid. Smart citizens even realize that in reality the media companies are the stupid or the reactionary preserving of the reporting and interpretation about the news in the world- knowledge of rule, not to share, but to money.

Smart citizens turned away from this media power geared backwards and for profit maximization (these were the subscribers), numerous press products stumbled, with mass layoffs by journalists as usually the first countermeasure, the reporting from the threatened "still job" does not get any better ... Constant appeal to the only true, miserable journalism by the reader than what they are: bows before the "imposed" castration of journalism or capitulations before the diversity and complexity of our world.

Because the only true journalism sometimes includes sensible restrictions, but definitely not the refusal to take on any kind of responsibility for your own writing.

For journalists who exercise their profession at a high (moral) level and not only have profit maximization in mind, it is still a matter of course in their articles on the topics that they report on (this is the reason for a public fee for radio and television, in the public broadcasters, a large part of the journalists are piling up with such a profession).

If journalists are increasingly no longer reporting, but only holding the camera without comment (which with the decision where they hold the camera, but is again a statement), journalists make themselves superfluous - the camera can hold behind anyone who has a camera.

Mona Hatoum did not go into this trap of the "mere illustration", on the contrary, it focuses on the processing of reality through her/in her art deliberately on the individual, to the vulnerable individual and the individual, the other through his actions or (failed) decisions ...

By emphasizing the vulnerability of the body , every single body, it gets the violence from the command centers and negotiating inexperienced (and emotionally uninvolved) war administrators and earners directly into the real world of the individual.

It is these people who suffer from every war,
dozens of people (33 girls of a deported school class),
hundreds of people (454 residents of the village that was accidentally bombed into the ground),
thousands of people (6565 victims in the innocent civilian population),
millions of people.

The 20th century alone has produced 100 to 185 million war victims , which includes about two to three times war-free relatives with late consequences that are waving the war into the next generations- Mona Hatoum reminds us of every past victim and every future victim.

And she reminds that it is time for each of us to get involved. Against the oppressors, the most stupid chaots, the even more stupid racists (we all belong to a kind of homo sapiens, which is genetically much closer to each other than is otherwise common in types of our fauna).

have to flee their homeland before the And today looking for refuge where either people in the future again before oppression, war, terror will have to flee or where civil societies have already come together that no longer allow the relapse into inhuman periods ...