art.review: Mona Hatoum
by Tina LaPorta

I have been waiting for several years to see Mona Hatoum's work up close
and personal. So now that my wish has materialized, what do I think?

The mini-retrospective here in NYC is an eclectic mixture of sculptural
objects, videos, photographs, and installation works. While walking
through the gallery space, shifting my gaze from one object to the next,
I realize that it is extremely difficult to fully appreciate this
artist's work in the absence of a context. And that it is precisely
this missing context which enlarges the gulf between the object and its
signification. What I mean exactly: each object appears to represent a
body of work completed well over a decade ago. So, while viewing one
object here and another one there, the viewer is required to understand
Hatoum's ideas and inquiries without any sense of time or place. This
type of curatorial strategy rarely works, and unfortunately it fails
here as well.

That said, there are a couple of Hatoum's pieces in the exhibition which
stand on their own. The most obvious one is a video installation, "Corps
Etranger." Hatoum has created a built environment which houses a
video-projected image onto the ground. With two openings, the viewer
enters into the piece and becomes immersed within the interiority of
Hatoum's body. As my gaze follows the camera's path, our eyes become one
and together we pass through her internal-bodily self. Her fluids,
veins and flesh are made visible all along this internalized trajectory.
As we watch, we notice and then hear a soundtrack in the background.
With one audio track superimposed upon another we simultaneously hear
Hatoum breathing as well as the mechanical breath of the
camera-apparatus. So, the visual coupled with the aural creates an
enhanced experience of repulsion and attraction to the human body. A
close-up view of Hatoum's skin evokes disgust, a sharp contrast to the
airbrushed imagery we are so accustomed to in a mass-media society.
But, Hatoum is acutely aware of the power of the female body as a site
for political contention as well as individual desire. And by creating
an architectural space in order to contain the projected image, she
further reinforces her concept of the body as a site–a place, an
environment through which ideas and ideologies have been historically
projected. By unraveling these cultural projections Hatoum has relocated
the body as pure biology, separate from its artistic soul.

Another object of interest is a small mechanical piece which looks like
a miniature sandbox. Within this rectangular space, a chrome mechanism
with two sides circles endlessly within the box itself. While moving,
one side of the mechanism creates marks along its path onto the surface
of the sand while the other side erases every trace of these markings.
This piece is interesting to consider in the context of Art History….
as Women create art there is a visible mechanism right behind them which
systematically erases their creations. But, as we all know, anything
that is repressed–returns.