ART CITIES:Buenos Aires-Mona Hatoum

The exhibition gathers together over 30 works that are not shown in chronological order but rather as a series of unexpected juxtapositions that create new meanings. In this way, each work echoes the complexity with which the artist manages to challenge and, at times, disturb our experience of the ordinary.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Fundación Proa Archive

This is the first exhibition at South American tour of Mona Hatoum’s work is made possible by the cooperation agreement between the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and Fundación Proa and the support in both countries of the Organización Techint through Tecpetrol. In the international contemporary art scene, Hatoum initially attracted public attention with her performance and video works in which the body gave expression to a divided reality, besieged by manifestations of political and social control. In the 1990s her work gradually moved towards large-scale installations and sculpture. Everyday objects feature prominently in these works, items such as chairs, beds and domestic utensils, which, when modified or blown up in size, re-present a familiar reality that reflects a suspicious, insidious and hostile world. These works appear vulnerable and disorientating, and leave no room for fixed meanings of any kind. What is familiar ceases to be so, and the expected is replaced by new visual and conceptual associations. In the curatorial text published in the exhibition catalogue, in Chiara Bertola’s words: “Her is bound up with life, with all its implications of wonder, amazement, irony and intimacy, but also rooted in an awareness of conflict and violence, of nomadism and personal freedom being taken away”.

 

Info: Mona Hatoum, Curating:Chiara Bertola, Fundación Proa, Avenida Don Pedro de Mendoza 1929, C1169 Buenos Aires, Duration: 28/3-14/6/15, Days & Hours: Tue- Sun 11:00-19:00, www.proa.org