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. Special Exhibitions Mona Hatoum Mona Hatoum was born in Lebanon in 1952. Her work, which focuses on the body, initially took the form of performance and video. Since 1989 she has concentrated on sculpture and installation. In a number of early performance and video pieces she used her own body as raw material, subjecting herself to intense physical ordeals whilst exploring the power relationships between victim and oppressor.
Movement is severely restricted, and communal proximity to other viewers also complicates the experience of intimacy. ' This sense of overwhelming intimacy is further heightened by a soundtrack of her own breath and heartbeat that accompanies the video through the soft black acoustic fabric lining. She invites the viewer to a close up view of her own body - from the dry landscape that is her skin to the timeless, primitive, and unchanged glistening cavernous world beneath. Every orifice of this virgin territory is explored in turn by the camera's 'imperialistic' eye. Instead of the Renaissance representation of the body as a triumph of anatomy and psychological awareness, the 'Corps etranger' shows it as abject, base matter.
Movement is severely restricted, and communal proximity to other viewers also complicates the experience of intimacy. ' This sense of overwhelming intimacy is further heightened by a soundtrack of her own breath and heartbeat that accompanies the video through the soft black acoustic fabric lining. She invites the viewer to a close up view of her own body - from the dry landscape that is her skin to the timeless, primitive, and unchanged glistening cavernous world beneath. Every orifice of this virgin territory is explored in turn by the camera's 'imperialistic' eye. Instead of the Renaissance representation of the body as a triumph of anatomy and psychological awareness, the 'Corps etranger' shows it as abject, base matter.
During the '80s she turned to making installations in which the spectator becomes the performer as he is invited to explore iron or steel constructions that radiate a threatening energy through the use of shadow, heat or magnetic fields. Borders of rooms are made of fencing, furniture is indicated by contours, and most three-dimensional forms are transparent, letting in the light and creating a longing for 'the other side' and 'the other'. Even her own body is regarded as unexplored territory when she swallows a video camera and has it follow the movements of her own gastrointestinal tract, later projecting the images it has recorded. Corps etranger is the name of one of these video projections, implying that also the body is a foreign region. For this first solo exhibition in the Netherlands, Hatoum decided to limit the presentation of her works to one floor.
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further information: http://www.sima.co.at/
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