Room 4
Conversation Piece II, 2011
6 chairs, glass beads and nylon thread
82 x 285 cm
Private collection, São Paulo
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In a privileged environment with period armchairs one can imagine a gathering of family members in which polite conversation turns into a pearl necklace or a spider web.
Roadworks, 1985
Video with sound
6:45
Courtesy of the artist
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This video documents a performance that Hatoum made in Brixton, South London in 1985, where she walked barefoot through the streets, dragging a pair of large boots attached to her ankles by their laces. Brixton is an area of London that had witnessed violent race riots in the previous year, therefore police presence was very prominent in the area. The boots that Hatoum chose to use were very particular: ‘Dr. Martens’, which have been traditionally worn by the British police, but were also adopted by the skinhead movement that is commonly associated with racist violence.
Hatoum's movement was encumbered by the boots that followed her vulnerable steps like a continual, threatening presence or heavy shadow.
Natura morta (medical cabinet), 2012
Metal, glass
61.5 x 54 x 17.5 cm
Private collection, São Paulo
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This wall-based sculpture is part of a group of works that Hatoum has made using the forms of hand grenades. Here, an array of different hand grenades shapes have been reproduced in colourful, mirrored Murano glass to create highly attractive and seductive objects that are reminiscent of luscious fruit. Ambiguously poised, these glass objects suggest something both explosive and deadly as well as something sustaining and alluring. They are displayed within a minimal steel cabinet whose medical associations reinforce the potential danger of the colourful objects housed within it.
Hair Receiver, 2012
Wooden cabinet, glass, hair
27 x 28 x 20 cm
Courtesy of the artist
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Hatoum often uses found objects in her work and this small glass and wood cabinet was discovered by the artist at the Çukurcuma antique market during a site visit to Istanbul for an exhibition at Arter in 2012. Inside the cabinet are various hairballs, perfectly formed cocoon-like shapes that have made their appearance in several earlier works such as Recollection and Hair Necklace, produced in 1995.
∞ , 1991-2001
Bronze
61 x 34.5 x 34.5 cm
Private Collection, San Pablo
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In ∞ toy soldiers march, reproducing the symbol of infinity, as though to say they are marching towards infinity without any sense or any possibility of resolution. These tiny toy soldiers, cast in bronze, placed on the surface of a small table like small decorations, offset a critical and harsh judgment against the initial easy irony of an infinite carefree military march.
Daybed, 2008
Steel with black finish
31.5 x 219 x 98 cm
Collection Montenegro Luiz Paulo, Rio de Janeiro
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These two steel sculptures demonstrate the way in which Hatoum frequently transforms a familiar domestic object through an exaggerated use of scale. Daybed is based on a cheese grater that has elegant, curved ends. When enlarged, the work becomes the size of a piece of furniture; a reclining bed which, with its sharp, abrasive surface, has uncanny associations. Paravent is based on a Victorian three-part, folded grater, enlarged to appear like a screen or room divider that cuts aggressively across the space.
Paravent, 2008
Steel with black finish
215 x 302 x 5 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Baluchi (Blue and Orange), 2008
Wool
135 x 240 cm
Courtesy of the artist
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This piece is part of an ongoing series of floor works that Hatoum has created using found, oriental carpets. In this piece, using a “Baluchi” carpet, she has painstakingly plucked out parts of a world map from its surface. The world depicted is reversed, with landmasses appearing as if they have been worn away, bare patches between the solid, intact carpet pile that represents the sea. It seems as if a vermin has eaten away at their structure and turned them into a disintegrating landscape.
Routes V, 2008
Pencil, ink on printed maps
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin-Paris
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This group of drawings is part of a series of works on paper that Hatoum has made using various airline flight maps, taken from in flight magazines. Hatoum meticulously colours in areas between the paths lines to create abstract images that suggest how travel and migration creates both a contraction and expansion of our contemporary world. The works create automatic 'maps', but ones that depict movement and travel rather than the outline of fixed, national territories.
Misbah, 2006‐2007
Metal chain, light bulb, brass lantern and eletric motor
56 x 32 x 28.5 cm (lamp); installation variables measured
Private collection, São Paulo
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‘Misbah’ is the Arabic word for lantern. Here, one of Hatoum’s recurring motifs – the soldier figure – is replicated as a decorative cut-out on a brass lantern. Like a child’s magic lantern, the environment is transformed when the lantern rotates, creating explosive and vertiginious shadows of soldiers and stars on the gallery walls.