Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum’s multimedia practice explores themes of containment, displacement, conflict, and home.

Her work—which spans installation, sculpture, video, photography, performance, and works on paper—often recontextualizes everyday domestic objects, imbuing them with a sense of menace. In Homebound (2000), for example, Hatoum wired furniture with an active electric current. Her film Measures of Distance (1988) juxtaposes photographs of her mother with narration of her mother’s letters from Beirut.

Hatoum studied graphic design in Lebanon before she was forced into exile during the Lebanese Civil War. She went on to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

She has exhibited in New York, Doha, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Beijing, and London, and has participated in the Venice Biennale, Documenta, the Biennale of Sydney, the Istanbul Biennial, and the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Hatoum’s work has sold for six figures on the secondary market.