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Measures of Distance
Mona Hatoum is of Palestinian origin.Marked by the events which
led the Palestinian people into exile and the struggle for
afirmation of their national identity, she very quickly oriented
her work towards political commitment. Her performances during
1980s were markedby the spirit of protest and resistance.
She began by using perfomance before turning to video,
installations and protophyte.
Measures of Distance
(1988), a 15-minute video work, tacitly foreshadows Hatoum's
evolution from the more subjective perspective of
performance-based work to the sculptures and installations she has
produced in the intervening decade. The video's key footage uses a
visual screen of Arabic script -- taken from a series of letters
between the artist and her mother -- that is superimposed over the
filmed image of her mother taking a shower. The screen both frames
and obscures her mother's body. In both the literal sense that it
was made during a visit home, and in a broader sense as well,
Measures of Distance is one of the few examples of Hatoum's work
to employ direct reference to the artist's exiled condition.
Hatoum, a Palestinian born in Beirut in 1952, was stranded in
Europe at the outset of civil war in 1975 (the municipal airport
in Beirut was closed for nine months), and decided to study art in
London, where she has subsequently lived most of her adult life.
In the video's soundtrack, as well as in the graphic image of text
layered over flesh, Hatoum explores how degrees of proximity and
separation can be conveyed by employing both concrete examples
(her mother taking a shower), and more formal abstractions (text,
paper, voices, a trip to Beirut).
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