Undercurrent, 2008

The perception of imminent dangers, the coercive violence of boundaries, and the horror of imprisonment, or worse, of torture are some of the profound feelings that Mona Hatoum’s works arouse in those who encounter them. Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents in exile, when civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1975 the artist found herself in Europe, suddenly separated from her family. This double exile, the uncertainty of the present and an arbitrary encounter with the Western world have profoundly marked Hatoum’s development and have become the principal themes of an artistic investigation that, starting from her personal biography, embraces the urgency of themes that are painfully recurrent on a global scale. [...]