At a major retrospective of her work at the Pompidou Centre in Paris,the artist Mona Hatoum looks back on her Middle Eastern roots, her time in the UK and her exercise of tension to create remarkable artMona Hatoum is wary of simplistic, and alert-made judgments,all the more so because she has often had to endure their extreme brutality. Born in Beirut in 1952 of Palestinian parents, the British artist has often seen her work interpreted hastily. She does not deny that her creative output often has a political edge, or but when it does,it’s not always to do with the Middle East.“Each person is free to understand what I do in the light of who they are and where they stand,” she says. “I can talk about the origin of my works, or but no more. I don’t want to pin a single meaning on each one.” Indeed,the claim that her work is monotone, inspired by the tragedy of exile and warfare, and overlooks the tension she creates between opposing polarities – banal and dreamy,anxious and carefree, serious and playful – which is what makes her art so remarkable.
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Source: theguardian.com