ExhibitionJune 4, 2021
Mona Hatoum, Exhibition and Julio González Award 2020
The exhibition dedicated to the British artist of Palestinian origin, Mona Hatoum, curated by Jose Miguel G. Cortés, will be on view at IVAM until September 12, 2021.
This exhibition was organized as part of the recognition received with the Julio González 2020 prize awarded to the artist in 2019, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a show at IVAM. This multidisciplinary creator is the second woman to receive this award that, in its 20-year history, has rewarded the work of artists such as Andreu Alfaro, Annette Messager, and Christian Boltanski.
About the award, José Miguel G. Cortés commented: "Mona Hatoum is a subtle and enigmatic creator who confronts us with the deepest emotions and feelings."
"Mona Hatoum" brings together a selection of sculptures, large installations, and works on paper made over the last two decades. This exhibition tributes an oeuvre of great diversity and significance, offering the public a direct, physical experience of the breadth of this artist's production. Mona Hatoum focuses her interest on creating works that have an emotional and psychological impact on the viewer despite their simple and reductionist form. She deliberately incorporates paradoxical layers of meaning into her works that generate ambiguity and ambivalence that make diverse and contradictory readings possible. She often works with attractive and seductive materials to create suggestive objects and installations that, when seen up close, allow us to glimpse beneath their surface an undercurrent of threat or danger.
In several of her works, Mona Hatoum highlights the presence of furniture and other types of domestic objects. Altered or enlarged to surreal proportions, these objects become a revealing reality of a suspicious, malevolent and hostile environment.
A series of works dedicated to maps, a theme that Mona Hatoum has recurrently explored in her production since the mid-1990s, using a wide variety of materials, is also presented. For this show, Mona Hatoum created Map (Clear, 2021), a new version of a series consisting of a large expanse of transparent glass marbles drawing a world map that covers the floor of a large room with a sparkling surface. It is seductive yet fragile and threatening, as it destabilizes the surface of that floor, turning it into a treacherously unnavigable space.
Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut into a Palestinian family. The outbreak of the Civil War in Lebanon surprised her during a brief stay in London, preventing her from returning to her country. She has participated in the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), documenta Kassel (2002 and 2017), the Biennale of Sydney (2006), and the Istanbul Biennial (1995 and 2011). Her most recent solo exhibitions include an extensive anthology at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2015), TATE Modern in London, and KIASMA, Helsinki (2016-2017).
This exhibition was organized as part of the recognition received with the Julio González 2020 prize awarded to the artist in 2019, endowed with 20,000 euros, and a show at IVAM. This multidisciplinary creator is the second woman to receive this award that, in its 20-year history, has rewarded the work of artists such as Andreu Alfaro, Annette Messager, and Christian Boltanski.
About the award, José Miguel G. Cortés commented: "Mona Hatoum is a subtle and enigmatic creator who confronts us with the deepest emotions and feelings."
"Mona Hatoum" brings together a selection of sculptures, large installations, and works on paper made over the last two decades. This exhibition tributes an oeuvre of great diversity and significance, offering the public a direct, physical experience of the breadth of this artist's production. Mona Hatoum focuses her interest on creating works that have an emotional and psychological impact on the viewer despite their simple and reductionist form. She deliberately incorporates paradoxical layers of meaning into her works that generate ambiguity and ambivalence that make diverse and contradictory readings possible. She often works with attractive and seductive materials to create suggestive objects and installations that, when seen up close, allow us to glimpse beneath their surface an undercurrent of threat or danger.
In several of her works, Mona Hatoum highlights the presence of furniture and other types of domestic objects. Altered or enlarged to surreal proportions, these objects become a revealing reality of a suspicious, malevolent and hostile environment.
A series of works dedicated to maps, a theme that Mona Hatoum has recurrently explored in her production since the mid-1990s, using a wide variety of materials, is also presented. For this show, Mona Hatoum created Map (Clear, 2021), a new version of a series consisting of a large expanse of transparent glass marbles drawing a world map that covers the floor of a large room with a sparkling surface. It is seductive yet fragile and threatening, as it destabilizes the surface of that floor, turning it into a treacherously unnavigable space.
Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut into a Palestinian family. The outbreak of the Civil War in Lebanon surprised her during a brief stay in London, preventing her from returning to her country. She has participated in the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), documenta Kassel (2002 and 2017), the Biennale of Sydney (2006), and the Istanbul Biennial (1995 and 2011). Her most recent solo exhibitions include an extensive anthology at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2015), TATE Modern in London, and KIASMA, Helsinki (2016-2017).
