You want to see conceptual art with a serious message?
Mona Hatoum presents real conflicts existing in our world today yet embodies her own personal narrative through her extraordinary art, in a sincere and accessible way.
Here at the Parasol Unit a particularly flash gallery, a most incredible space in fact, selected sculptures and instillation pieces made by her over the past 12 years make a powerful exhibition.
Much of her work reflects her background, some work comments on the issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and some on more generic worldwide feelings of insecurity, displacement and fragility.
Feminine, personal, and full of colour, Mobile Home II (2006) is a structure consisting of suitcases, furniture, handkerchiefs attached to moving wires. Relating to the relocation of families it is also probably partly a testament to her own displacement from Lebanon in the 70’s when she had to start a new life in Britain as the civil war broke out.
Nature morte aux grenades (2008) consists of a variety of pretty pastel coloured glass objects in hand grenade shapes arranged on a steel trolley. These objects could be a decorative ornament on your mantelpiece, but for their sinister forms. Their colours and arrangement on a surgical trolley seem to relate to Damien Hirst’s cabinets full of glass bottles and colourful pills - although his work focuses on a death, but not on war.
Hatoum has tried to disconnect herself from Saatchi’s ‘crew’ in the past, refusing to sell him works at the height of the art surge in the 90’s.
Being 10 years older than most of these artists and focusing on differing issues most her art has an entirely different outlook. Yet perhaps in this piece, which is new, some influences have snuck in?
Undercurrent (2004), a floor instillation, is a squirming mass of thick electrical wires extending from a woven middle into a radius of stark yellow light bulbs.
It is a cold and collected piece distinctly different others in this collection. Using only metal and harsh lighting. You see no colourful emotion or Hatoum’s own personality warming this piece. It relies on the hard facts of material and form to stir up anxiety in the viewer. You can’t quite place exactly what the instillation is representing, yet you can see it is a tense, uneasy and fragile object – the middle being a metal woven rug-like thing, (but not the most comfortable of rugs) with fragility exhuming from it. You might accidentally step on one of the light bulbs for instance! Something makes you think of torture, possible death from electricity or other such things. The domesticity of the household light bulbs, the idea of a rug gives out to other unnerving possibilities, and ultimately the fragile nature of comfort.
Totally eerie is the mobile hung in the middle of a small room lit so cut outs of soldiers and stars rotate around the walls of an otherwise pitch black space.
I say eerie not because it makes you feel slightly tipsy after a glass of wine. No. But because the simple imagery of the night you get from it is not a nice cosy night. It is a scary, war-torn night where childhood consists of nightmares.
Her repeated creations of the maps of the world using the ‘Peters Projection’ (a map made from accurate landmass, rather than from a western perspective) in different surfaces (cotton, rice paper and a household rug) spell out issues surrounding world territories.
Surreal yet purposeful, her work is a fusion of moral interpretation and artistic expression.
In fact if there is one exhibition you should see this month this is it. And that is because you will get something profound out of it.
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art
13 June – 8 August 2008
Mona Hatoum
Nature morte aux grenades, 2006-2007 (detail)
Crystal, mild steel, rubber
95 x 208 x 70 cm
Photo credit: Marc Domage
Courtesy the artist and Jay Jopling / White Cube, London
Copyright Mona Hatoum 2008
Mona Hatoum
Undercurrent, 2004
Electric cable, light bulbs, computerised dimmer unit
Diameter: 372 9/16 in. (Diam. 950 cm)
Photo credit: Mattias Givell
Courtesy Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)
© Mona Hatoum 2008
Mona Hatoum
Static, 2006
Steel chair, glass beads and wire
40 3/16 x 22 1/16 x 27 9/16 in. (102 x 56 x 70 cm)
Photo credit: Daina Moussa
Courtesy Town House Gallery, Cairo, 2005
© Mona Hatoum 2008
Mona Hatoum
Globe, 2007
Mild steel
Diameter: 66 15/16 in. (Diam. 170 cm)
Photo: Ela Bialkowska
Courtesy Galleria Continua, San Gimignano-Beijing and Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)
© Mona Hatoum 2008
1 Comment
July 3, 2008 at 11:05 pm
she’s really one of my favorite.
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