Mona Hatoum

Born 1952 in Beirut, he lives and works in London.  

Lebanese-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum takes her inspiration from the wars that scarred her homeland and from the memory of family happiness shattered by exile. From 1970 to 1972 she studied at the University of Beirut, then left her hometown for a mixture of political and personal reasons and settled in London. There she studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art from 1975 to 1979 and at the Slade School of Art from 1979 to 1981.
Hatoum continued make her sculpture-objects into the 2000s. A recurring theme here is exile, as in Mobile Home (2005). On wires stretched between two crowd barriers to create washing lines hang a teddy-bear and dishcloths, while a suitcase on the floor stands ready for hasty departure.

In Toulouse, Mona Hatoum is presenting Jardin suspendu. This large-scale sculpture with its Beuysian overtones is made up of jute sacks just like the ones filled with sand and used for protection in war zones. Here, though, they are filled with seeds which sprout and pierce the material, revealing thousands of soft green shoots of grass. This work implicitly evokes the wars that continue to ravage the planet, and the forces for life and renewal that survive them. By contrasting an image of destruction with an image of life and rebirth, Hatoum tells us that there is hope. History may not yet have brought peace, but in the meantime, the important thing is that hope should continue to grow in men’s hearts.