Mona Hatoum: Domestic Disturbance

Mona Hatoum is recognized as one of the most significant figures in contemporary art. Her work addresses political conflict, the physical body, and feminist issues in a surrealistic style and with a minimalist aesthetic. This thought-provoking artist uses diverse methods and works in various media, including installation, video, sculpture, and performance art. This four-color catalog of her current exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams was edited by Laura Heon, MASS MoCA's Curator, and gracefully illuminates in words and pictures the Hatoum exhibition, which was at SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico before coming to Massachusetts. The works in DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE revolve around Hatoum's continuing fascination with the everyday object, which she turns into something uncanny and often threatening. Kitchen utensils crackle with an audible, amplified electrical current in Sous Tension. The Baalbek Birdcage, a beautiful Victorian birdcage enlarged to the exact size of a prison cell at Alcatraz, represents the near-universal, feminine dread of a confining domestic life. La Grand Broyeuse (Mouli-Julienne x17) is an 18-foot-tall reproduction of an early, hand-operated "food processor," which the viewer quickly realizes could injure a human being. Also included, in sharp contrast, is a series of delicate rubbings on Japanese wax paper - faint, ghostly impressions, white on a white sheet - that Hatoum created during a residency at the Shaker community in Sabbath Day Lake, Maine, using beautiful handmade Shaker colanders and graters from the 1880s.