Mona Hatoum and the Biographical Influence on Cross-Cultural Exchange

1. Mona Hatoum and the Biographical Influence on Cross-Cultural Exchange Nicole Shelton

2. Issues • Cultural communication is limited by Hatoum’s denial of biographical importance, which stems from avoidance of revealing intentions • Imbalance between biographical and formal analysis has led to misinterpretation • By recognizing and asserting biographical experiences and visual analysis, balance could be achieved

3. Approach to Communication • From performance to installation • Created distance demonstrates her experiences • Ambiguity Light at the End, 2002

4. Artist’s Intention • To create an experience • Aesthetic, not self-referential structures • Interpretation open to encourage audience imagination • Didactics limit self-reflection of the viewer • Hatoum wants viewers to reflect on their own experiences

5. Misinterpretation • Hatoum does not like too much attention paid to content and over-reading of her background, she wants the work to be appreciated for itself • Hatoumclaims she is not trying to give form to her personal experience • This presentation argues for a balance within analysis between biography and aesthetics

6. Oriental • Seen as responsive to middle-eastern craftsmanship or Lebanese conflicts • Not examples of learned tradition • Western education Undercurrent, 2008 Entrails, 1995

7. Universality • Endoscopic camera, using her own body • body = disgust • Confrontation of a foreign and universal experience Corps Entranger (Foreign Body), 1994

8. Biography • Born 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon, into family exiled from Palestine • Visit to London 1975, Lebanon civil war forced her emigration into double-exile • New and more complex ethnic, class, and gender structures encouraged activism and rejection of academic boundaries • Measures of Distance video (right, 1988) showed her separation caused by exile, and freed her artistically

9. Exile and Identity • Exiles may have problems realizing their own desires • Critique on Western Structures of time and confinement • Offers ambiguity to encourage questioning of attitudes and beliefs • Separation from usual comforts; homes are provisional, borders can become prisons. Cube, 2008 Light Sentence, 1992

10. Homebound • Malleable formation of identity gave unique perspectives • Kitchen utensils seen as exotic • Sense of threat • Homebound, 2000

11. Audience Expectations • Expectation to articulate struggle or to be a representative voice of people • Opposition towards categorization Measures of Distance, 1988

12. Displacement • Audience experience alludes to Hatoum’s experiences • Indirectly communicates • Abstract and actual boundaries Present Tense, 1996

13. The Human Condition • Ideas we can all relate to, ostracism • Exile is part of the human condition, subjective to all • Universality

14. Themes • Divisions: a physical or psychological divide or barrier referencing the social, political, or historical • Hybrid notions: allows freedom within the space but either repels audience presence or suggests confinement; freedom and bondage Light at the End, 2002

15. Characteristics • Openness encourages individual realizations • Excluding herself undermines communication • Her past affects her approach and themes

16. Cultural Exchange • Hatoum’s acknowledgement of her biography would improve cultural communication • Her unique cultural experiences are not consistently recognized, and are subverted to aesthetics • Balance between biographical experiences and visual analysis needs to be recognized and asserted