Mona Hatoum and the aesthetics of melancholy

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Mona Hatoum, ‘Light Sentence’ (1992)

I’ve loved Mona Hatoum‘s work since I first saw it in 1993 at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens–an experience that still emerges from the mists of time on a regular basis, as one of those signal encounters with contemporary art. The exhibition was called Four Rooms and Hatoum was one of four artists, but her’s is the only piece that I clearly recollect.

I remember walking into a comparitively confined space, which contained rows of heavy wire storage lockers. They were stacked and grouped so that they created a narrow corridor between them, akin to a cell block. The metal forms, alone, were chilling enough but, in their midst was a single incandescent bulb, suspended from cord. The harsh light it emitted multiplied the bars of the metal lockers by casting their shadows on the walls, floor and ceiling, and on the figures of people in the gallery.

The bulb was slowly being raised and lowered by a pulley. As it moved, the shadows moved. In my gut I felt the tension inspired by those forms and shadows. I sat down on the floor, overwhelmed by the chance to be there, and immerse myself in the dynamics and mood of the installation.

I revisited that encounter most recently when a small book on Hatoum’s work arrived in the mail. And believe me, although I love West Michigan, so little goes on here art-wise that the occasional arrival of a new book is huge. This one, I’ve taken to my heart. For one thing, it’s small and easy to handle–a far cry from the adipose tomes that pass for too many art books these days. It was produced by Hatje Cantz, a Stuttgart-based publisher with a history of lovingly designing and printing carefully selected books. So, at first, I just savored the binding, the quality of the paper that the pages were printed on, and the wonderfully paced integration of text and image.

It focuses on Hatoum’s work in the Goetz Collection and, about one-third of the way in, I found a two-page spread whose entire surface was taken up with a photograph of an installation of Hatoum’s Short Space (1992). The work consists of nine metal bedsprings, the kind made for inexpensive beds and cots. They hang in groups of three from metals poles that, in turn, are suspended via pulleys from the gallery ceiling.

At that point I needed to locate the English translation of Rainald Schumacher‘s essay, to learn what the photograph could not tell me: that the groups of bedsprings slowly move up and down in counterpoint to one another, the motion underscoring their uncanny recollection of torture racks or, at best, a ward filled with uncomfortable beds–a sister work, it seems, to Light Sentence, Hatoum’s installation at the Serpentine.

Undated but recent portrait of Mona Hatoum by Gautier DeBlonde

Although the images in the book are static, they communicate the strength of the full extent of Hatoum’s oeuvre, including the video images. One of the things I love about the work is that, although it’s so focused on the human body, it does so allusively. Allusively and with a melancholy edge that I find irresistable. But also with surprising humor, as in Van Gogh’s Back, her 1995 photograph of a man’s hirsute back, with hair whorled around like the passages of light in Starry Night. It also puts bodily experience into a context that ranges from the intensely local (the bedroom and kitchen) to the global (in her 2009 work, Hot Spot III, a large globe from made of heavy metal wire and blazing with red lights).

Mona Hatoum, ‘Hot Spot III’ (2009)

Hatoum is a more thoughtful artist than Kiki Smith, whose work I also admire but whose approach often seems heavy-handed and literal when compared to Hatoum. Hatoum communicates as much in terms of absence as she does presence, often strongly evoking the latter via the former and vice versa (as does Doris Salcedo). In Undercurrent (red), from 2008, Hatoum uses heavy-duty electrical cords to weave a square, textile-like grid: from the grid, however, like unravelling fringes or entrails, the cords spread to create a circular penumbra. At the end of each cord is a socket and light-bulb. The aesthetic dimension of the work is as intrinsic as the complex interweaving of concepts.

Mona Hatoum, ‘Undercurrent (red)’ (2008)

The book also includes a short essay by Ingvild Goetz, which provides insights into how the collector perceives Hatoum’s work and how it is so important to this very personal collection. I was impressed because Goetz could speak about Hatoum’s art in metaphorical terms. The sense is she collects it because it resonates with her on a deeply personal level–rare among collectors of any era, but especially telling now days.

In addition to its overview of Hatoum’s oeuvre in pictures and essays, the book contains an excellent bibliography, summary of important solo and group exhibitions, and a catalog of Hatoum’s works in the Goetz Collection. Overall, a treasure in a small package.

 

 

also by Janet Tyson

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