São Paulo – From December 6th to March 1st, audiences in São Paulo can check out the first exhibition of the Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum in Brazil. In addition to artworks and installations created by Hatoum alone or in partnership with other artists, each aspect of the exhibition set-up also bears Hatoum’s touch. A demanding artist, she personally coordinates the placement of all her artworks in the fourth floor of Estação Pinacoteca, where the show is taking place. The exhibition is sponsored by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Hatoum doesn’t like to define her own work. She says her entire life influences her art. “I tend to work on ideas. The ideas can manifest themselves in so many different ways. For a long time, throughout the 80s, I made mostly performance and video works and then in the 90s I moved towards installation and sculptures which is still. There is no overall theme in my work,” she asserts.
What can the audience expect from the show, then? Diverse pieces that draw their inspiration from multiple sources. A total of 30 works are featured. Some use household items such as chairs and bottles. Others feature more politically charged elements, such as the panel named Over My Dead Body.
“The soldier is a toy, sitting on the woman’s nose. So, obviously, in terms of scale the woman has the upper hand, she is the dominant figure, more powerful. The soldier has become a toy and looks almost like a fly that you can flick off the nose. The power balance is completely disrupted here and it becomes a humorous image as well,” says Hatoum. “I very often use humor in my work to deflate a little heavy topics, creating contradictions,” she explains.
Installation Sonhando Acordado (freely translated as Daydreaming) is composed of 33 pillow cases embroidered year the mothers of children patients at the Association of Assistance to Cardiac Children and Adolescents and Heart Transplant Receivers (ACTC, in the Portuguese acronym). Hatoum first became aware of these mothers’ work during her first trip to Brazil, in 2010.
The artist says she was moved on seeing the embroidery made by the mothers of children undergoing treatment. “They house them and teach them how to do embroidery as a way to keep their mind off their troubles and also as way for them to earn money while they are waiting for the operation to happen,” she explains.
Hatoum decided she wanted to create an artwork with the women. “I would like to ask them to draw and embroider their dreams and their wishes and what they feel would make their life better, and embroider it on a pillow case, as a pillow is all about dreaming,” she says.
In Janela (Window), the audience watches a real-time projection of the street facing the Estação Pinacoteca venue, set in the area known as Cracolândia (Crackland), in São Paulo.
“I often like to bring the street, the outside into the space. The gallery space is always a kind of neutral space where you are trying to get away from real life. In fact I like to bring real life into it. Of course here is a very specific kind of area and I just wanted to have the street, the life outside brought in,” she asserts.
Since her artworks address a bevy of subjects, what does she expects the audience to feel upon seeing her pieces? ““It is very difficult to predict what people will read in the work. Of course I put things in it and I hope they will read some of those things. Each work reverberates with many meanings and can be interpreted differently by different people according to their own experience. In many ways, the public completes the work, because they bring in their own stories, their own interpretations, their own dreams, and their own background into the work. It is an open system because an artwork can be interpreted in many different ways. And I like to keep this way,” she says.
Service
Exhibition of artworks by Mona Hatoum
Estação Pinacoteca
Largo General Osório, 66 – Downtown – São Paulo
Telephone: (+55 11) 3335-4990
Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm; visitors must leave at 6:00 pm
Combined ticket (Pinacoteca & Estação Pinacoteca): R$ 6 and R$ 3 (US$ 2.3 and US$ 1.1)
Free admission on Saturdays.
Students bearing student cards pay half price.
Free admission for children aged 10 or under and elderly people aged 60 or older.
Discount parking: R$ 10 (US$ 3.8) for the first three hours.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
