{"id":2796,"date":"2024-08-07T20:44:11","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T18:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/?p=2796"},"modified":"2024-09-26T19:56:03","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T17:56:03","slug":"mona-hatoum-its-about-shattering-the-familiar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/?p=2796","title":{"rendered":"MONA HATOUM: \u201cIT\u2019S ABOUT SHATTERING THE FAMILIAR\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY: EMMA ROBERTSON<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Hatoum, do you see darkness in your art?<\/b><\/p>\n

I think your personal experience shapes the way you view the world around you. With 15 years of civil war in Lebanon and conflict in the Middle East ever since I can remember, there is nothing very uplifting about it and this inevitably filters through my work. So, yes, there is darkness but there is lightness as well. There are often two sides to each piece, not just one meaning. Duality and contradictions exist in most of the work: darkness and light, heaviness and humor, beauty and danger\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Humor? That\u2019s surprising \u2014 I don\u2019t see a lot of humor in a piece like <\/b>The Negotiating Table<\/i><\/b>, for example.<\/b><\/p>\n

Well, take my performance piece <\/span>Roadworks, <\/span><\/i>for instance. I walked around the streets of Brixton dragging heavy Dr. Martens boots \u2014 the boots that the police and skin heads used to wear \u2014 behind my bare feet so that you have the symbol of vulnerability, this woman being followed by the boots of the state and racist thugs. But it is a surreal and humorous gesture. People interacted with it! I kept hearing comments like, \u201cOh, the Invisible Man,\u201d \u201cDoes she know she\u2019s being followed?\u201d I like using humor to deflate those heavy situations. There are also contradictions in the installation <\/span>Light Sentence<\/span><\/i>. The rigidity of the cages is contradicted by the fluidity of the moving shadows. It\u2019s both mesmerizing, beautiful but also disturbing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am interested in exploring the phenomenology of space and materials.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Walking around that piece is a dizzying, unsettling experience\u2026 Is it your goal to make your audience somewhat uncomfortable?<\/b><\/p>\n

Light Sentence<\/span><\/i> is about an unsettled space, about a space in constant flux with no solid point of reference\u2026 But I don\u2019t know if I think about making my audience uncomfortable on purpose. I don\u2019t have any specific strategy; I don\u2019t sit there and say, \u201cOh, <\/span>this<\/span><\/i> is going to mean <\/span>this<\/span><\/i>.\u201d I am interested in exploring the phenomenology of space and materials. <\/span>I have really kept a very experimental attitude. I like to surprise myself and hopefully in that way, keep it surprising for other people<\/span>. I think the work is open to interpretation. And I like to keep it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

You must have heard a lot of different interpretations of your work over the years.<\/b><\/p>\n

You know, I\u2019m always surprised when, years after I make a work, someone comes up and says, \u201cOh, this means this to me.\u201d Just recently I was talking about <\/span>Light Sentence<\/span><\/i> in kind of negative terms\u2026 You know, it reminds you of the architecture of tower blocs in the suburbs of big cities, uniform and regimented architecture\u2026 But someone responded, \u201cOh, it\u2019s funny because when I looked at the shadows, it gave me a lot of hope.\u201d Wonderful! Absolutely amazing! (<\/span>Laughs<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/p>\n

It is important for your work to raise questions?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, that\u2019s very important for me. I\u2019m working with feelings of displacement, disorientation, estrangement \u2014 when the familiar turns into something foreign or even threatening. It\u2019s about shattering the familiar to create uncertainty and make you question things that you normally take for granted. I suppose this is what critical awareness is about.<\/span><\/p>\n

I read that the surveillance systems and institutions of 1980s London helped spark your own critical awareness of the world around you, and influenced your performance pieces very heavily.<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"

Mona Hatoum<\/p><\/div>\n

The issue of surveillance was a recurring theme in my early performance and video work. <\/span>Corps \u00e9tranger<\/span><\/i>, a video installation that I made using an endoscopic camera to film both the surface and the inside of my body, pushed this idea of surveillance to an absurd extreme \u2014 I was implying that surveillance can even penetrate inside you. There\u2019s no place that remains unturned or unobserved. Those ideas have definitely permeated my work\u2026 And still do until now. But looking back, it\u2019s clear to me that those years were very tumultuous, very intense, my performances were fueled with anger. They were vigil-like. I think they suited the way I was at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

How so?<\/b><\/p>\n

I was too impatient so the immediacy of performance suited me at the time. I couldn\u2019t stay with something for too long, I couldn’t settle down, I was too too restless. Not that I\u2019m not restless anymore\u2026 (<\/span>Laughs<\/span><\/i>) I was too self-critical and I could never put my own work on the wall or live with it, you know? At the time when I was doing these performances, I was quite young and fearless and I felt that I had nothing to lose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Has that changed? Do you feel now like you have something to lose?<\/b><\/p>\n

Well\u2026 (<\/span>Sighs<\/span><\/i>) I don\u2019t know. In those early days, I was this young unknown artist and it didn\u2019t matter what I did because who cares? (<\/span>Laughs<\/span><\/i>) Does it matter now? I don\u2019t know. With performances, you work so hard to prepare, you travel across the world to show the work in Canada, in New York, here, there, and maybe 50 people would turn up at the most. Then it\u2019s all dismantled and gone. So, after a while, I just wanted to be able to have a more measured approach, to develop a work over a longer period, to make my mistakes in private before presenting them in a public situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing those works again makes me both cringe and wonder how I had the guts to do it all\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Do you feel less \u201con display\u201d now that you\u2019re focusing more on installations and objects?<\/b><\/p>\n

With installation my own body has been replaced by that of the viewer. Impressions and thoughts come out of the experience of interacting with the space and materials. I am not there to perform or deliver a message. The work exists independently of me. Once it\u2019s finished, it has a life of its own. It\u2019s there for people to view, to interact with\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

So is it possible for you to leave your past works behind completely?<\/b><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t really say that because there are recurring themes in my work and a circularity and repetition of certain ideas even if they manifest themselves in different ways. Every exhibition or residency in a new location brings certain characteristics which sometimes lead to revisiting some concepts or ideas. Sometimes I look at some early works and I think, \u201cThis was an idea that I could have expanded on, I could have pushed this concept further or in another direction.\u201d It can be very hard to look at work from 30 years ago because it brings out a lot of emotions, especially the performance work. Seeing those works again is always interesting. It makes me both cringe and wonder how I had the guts to do it all\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

https:\/\/the-talks.com\/interview\/mona-hatoum\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY: EMMA ROBERTSON Ms. Hatoum, do you see darkness in your art? I think your personal experience shapes the way you view the world around you. With 15 years of civil war in Lebanon and conflict in the Middle East ever since I can remember, there is nothing very uplifting about it and this inevitably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2850,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions\/2850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}