An artist forever pushing herself to do things differently.

Mona Hatoum challenges the movements of surrealism and minimalism, making artwork that explores the conflicts and contradictions of our world.

Hatoum often adopts furniture and everyday household items as her material, appropriating and transforming kitchen knives, screens, and wire to create a bewildering and isolating atmosphere that seems surreal.

Hatoum discusses the notion of "family" in the installation series titled Remains of the Day, a work originally conceived for the 10th Hiroshima Art Prize exhibition. In an immersive home environment, the artist placed two sets of churned children's chairs, toy trucks, cribs, etc., into a kitchen area and play area. This installation affords the impression of artifacts' afterimages, retorting a conventional notion of "family" into a site of flux, chaos, and alienation rather than a place of refuge and order.

The map is an important clue and a recurring motif in Hatoum's work. They include maps of the world, maps of Palestine, aviation routes, etc. All of which represent the unstable borders and shifting global geopolitics.

Employing a wide range of materials, from construction materials such as steel, brick, and concrete, to crushed stone, glass, and human hair, Hatoum allows them to resonate poetically and metaphorically with one another. In her works Remains to be Seen and Orbital, Hatoum explores the basic forms of grids and spheres, drawing on Minimalist sculpture's precise geometry and exploring the possibility of their formal disintegration.

Mona Hatoum considers the physical space and the viewer the indispensable integrals of her work. She believes in one thing: only when the work of art, the physical space, and the viewer are brought together on a magical point would art flow naturally.

Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952 and has lived and worked in London since 1975. Solo exhibitions include Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2017); Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, touring to Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St Louis, MO (2017-18); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, touring to Tate Modern, London and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2015-16); Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2014); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2013); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2012); Beirut Art Centre (2010); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2009); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2005); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, touring to Magasin III, Stockholm and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany (all 2004); Tate Britain, London (2000); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (1999); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, touring to New Museum, New York (1997).

Hatoum has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Documenta 14, Kassel, Germany and Athens (both 2017); 6th Marrakesh Biennale (2016); 5th Moscow Biennale; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (both 2011); 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006); 51st Venice Biennale (2005); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); The Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London (1995); 46th Venice Biennale (1995); and 4th Istanbul Biennial (1995).

Among other awards, Hatoum has received the Praemium Imperiale (2019), the 10th Hiroshima Art Prize (2017) and the Joan Miró Prize (2011).