Programs Calendar Films

15-minute video work, tacitly foreshadows Hatoum's evolution from the more subjective perspective of performance-based work to the sculptures and installations she has produced in the intervening decade. The video's key footage uses a visual screen of Arabic script -- taken from a series of letters between the artist and her mother -- that is superimposed over the filmed image of her mother taking a shower. The screen both frames and obscures her mother's body. In both the literal sense that it was made during a visit home, and in a broader sense as well, Measures of Distance is one of the few examples of Hatoum's work to employ direct reference to the artist's exiled condition. Hatoum, a Palestinian born in Beirut in 1952, was stranded in Europe at the outset of civil war in 1975 (the municipal airport in Beirut was closed for nine months), and decided to study art in London, where she has subsequently lived most of her adult life. In the video's soundtrack, as well as in the graphic image of text layered over flesh, Hatoum explores how degrees of proximity and separation can be conveyed by employing both concrete examples (her mother taking a shower), and more formal abstractions (text, paper, voices, a trip to Beirut).

Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut in 1952. After studying at The Byam Shaw School of Art and The Slade School of Art, both located in London, where she has lived and worked since 1975, her artwork has been featured at exhibits worldwide. She has held teaching posts at Jan van Eyck Akademie and L’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts, and was awarded the title of Visiting Professor by Chelsea College of Art and Design and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Desing in 1998. Hatoum has been awarded several fellowships and prizes in her career, most recently, the Roswitha Hoftmann and The Sonning prizes in 2004.


Image Caption:
Courtsey of Mona Hatoum & LUX, London