Mona Hatoum
b. 1952, Palestine
l like making reference to furniture in my work because they are objects which we encounter in our everyday life, and we already have a relationship with these objects. Furniture is also very much about the body, and a site for projection.
Incommunicado is an adapted infant’s hospital cot – an assisted ready-made. With its bare metal bars and side rails, it turns into a confining structure. It is cold and harsh, and instead of having a solid base that would normally support a mattress, thin wires have been stretched taut across the frame. They are reminiscent of cheese wire or an egg-slicer. There is an immediate association with some kind of abuse or pain, but one can project oneself onto it in the role of victim or perpetrator.
Marrow is another work based on the same form as the metal infant’s cot. This time it is cast in a brownish translucent rubber. It is called Marrow, as in bone marrow, but without the bone structure to support it, it just slumps on the floor like a collapsed body.
(Text: friends + neighbours catalogue, 2000)
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