Room 2
Sonhando acordado , 2014
Embroidery on fabric
Courtesy of the artist – Work produced in collaboration with ACTC (Associação de Assistência à Criança e ao Adolescente Cardíacos e aos Transplantados do Coração)
View more
Hide
Is a new work that is hung between the columns in the central room. This work was made in cooperation with ACTC (Associação de Assistência à Criança e ao Adolescente Cardíacos e aos Trasplantados do Coração), an organisation that assists mothers of children with heart problems who are being treated at the hospital in São Paulo. As part of this charity support, they are taught embroidery to help keep their minds occupied, and to provide them with gainful employment. Hatoum asked the women to draw and embroider their desires and dreams onto pillowcases. In this way, each woman’s story has set something in motion, pushing her life beyond the restrictions imposed by her difficult situation.
Cappello per due, 2013
Straw, wood, steel
11,5 x 70,5 x 42 (sombreros), (hats), installation dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins
View more
Hide
Cappello per due exhibits a kind of metaphoric or visual acrobatics, suggesting themes of intimacy but also of ambiguity and forced coexistence. Two hats, the brims of which are woven together to form a single piece, become a metaphor of our existential condition that is both reassuring and suffocating at the same time.
SP Atelier, 2014
Photographs, drawings and objects
Courtesy of the artist and Alexander and Bonin, New York
View more
Hide
Is a new work that consists of a display of experiments, samples, photos, objects, sketches and research material, each fragment representing a chapter in the artist's preparation for the exhibition (in Sao Paolo and Buenos Ayres) and her creative research.
Drowning Sorrows (Cachaça), 2014
Cut bottles
250 cm in diameter
Courtesy of the artist and White Cube
View more
Hide
This floor-based sculpture is made using various bottles of cachaça, the national drink of Brazil. In this work, she has cut these various bottles at various angles and arranged them in a circular pattern on the gallery floor. They seem to float, as if on a puddle of liquid – of freshwater or seawater or the same alcoholic substance they contained – their necks and bottoms just emerging from the floor.
Worry beads, 2009
Accounts of concern
Patinated bronze, mild steel
dimensions variable
Private collection, Road Town, British Virgin Islands
View more
Hide
In this work, Hatoum plays with the scale of an object enlarging a rosary and casting the beads in metal so that they end up looking like cannonballs. Used to aid prayer and meditation in several religions, or to gain ease of mind in times of worry or stress, this contemplative prayer instrument begins to resonate with associations of war and destruction when it is expanded to a spectacular size and weight in Hatoum’s work. Despite the gentle curves it draws reclining elegantly on the floor, Worry Beads is not a calm and peaceful object at all.
Ventana, 2014
Closed-circuit video projection
417 x 990 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Alexander and Bonin, Nova York
View more
Hide
The large video projection entitled Janela consists of an external video camera that films in real time the goings on in the street outside the foundation, projecting them inside, spreads along part of the wall. Thus the artist creates a close relationship between the interior and the exterior, linking the suspended and fossilised time of the museum to the vital and rhythmic one of the city.
Traffic, 2002
Pressboard, plastic, metal, beeswax, hair
43 x 66 x 68 cm
Private collection, São Paulo
View more
Hide
In Traffic, two suitcases sit on the floor, attached by a thick mass of human hair. This work can be seen as a metaphor for those who travel, carrying their baggage (emotional, cultural and literal) from one place to another. At the same time, it reminds us that no object exists in our lives without getting tangled up in our own bodies, our emotions, and our sense of ourselves.
Umbilicus, 2003
Metal, plastic, nylon thread
162 x 46 x 33 cm
Private collection, São Paulo
View more
Hide
Another work based on using a found piece of furniture that she transforms into a surreal object. A chain of buttons coiled like an umbilical cord comes out of the seat of an old stool trailing down to the floor and forming a meandering snake-like line.
Electrified (variable II), 2014
Kitchenware, furniture, electrical wire, lamp, transformer
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and White Cube
View more
Hide
The artist targets the sphere of domesticity and the concept of home in this installation which consists of kitchen utensils and pieces of furniture (sieves, a vegetable mill, graters, chairs etc), attached to each other and suspended from the ceiling in one line that ends with a light bulb that flickers and fades up and down. The electricity runs through the line of suspended domestic objects transforming them into something threatening.