Mona Hatoum, born 1952, is an artist currently based in London. The first image is from a performance from 1983 made in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, titled The Negotiating Table. It consisted of the artist's body with feet bound wrapped in plastic and gauze, covered in entrails and blood. She lay completely still, breathing, on a table flanked by two empty chairs. The whole scene was lit by a single light bulb. Speakers above played news reports of the invasion.
The second image is from a 1980 performance called Don't Smile; You're on Camera, where she trained a video camera onto a seated audience in front of her. Behind her was a video monitor apparently displaying what the camera recorded. Behind the scenes was an assistant mixing the feed so that when Hatoum trained the camera on someone's clothed chest, either an image of a naked chest appeared, a chest clad in underwear or an x-ray of lungs. At times the gender would be switched as well. Audience members left in anger.
Hatoum on the Negotiating Table: “My performance work at the time was not necessarily a response to events in Lebanon and the Middle East (with the exception of The Negotiating Table), but dealt with the generalized issue of the relationship between the ‘Third World’ and the West.”
Hatoum: “I think artworks are rooted in one’s history and life experience. So inevitably there is a sense of conflict, threat and instability in my work, but it is not meant as an illustration of my own experience.” Her artworks, while rarely autobiographical or explicitly topical, communicate many of her life’s experiences: an outrage at the entrenched racism and sexism in liberal democracies; the condition of exile; the plight of women; and a wariness of state-sponsored surveillance."
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