Mona Hatoum: Inside Out

This spring, Kunsthal KAdE starts the year with a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of British-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum. Entitled Inside Out, the exhibition features work spanning the artist’s entire career: from her performance and videos of the 1980s to recent sculptures, installations and works on paper. This will be the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work in the Netherlands.

Hatoum was born in Lebanon as the daughter of Palestinian exiles and has lived in London since 1975. Her work revolves around the tension between the concept of home, displacement and exile. With a minimalist aesthetic and poetic use of the ordinary, Hatoum manages to transform themes of global conflict into imaginative sculptures and installations that are both compelling and thought provoking. Everyday objects are electrified, the terrestrial globe becomes a buzzing red neon map and glass forms are trapped inside cage-like structures. 

Home and Conflict 

The concept of 'home' is a recurring motif in Hatoum’s oeuvre. By subtly manipulating the everyday and the perfectly ordinary, Hatoum turns the idea of 'home' as a haven on its head. 
 
The artist often takes familiar domestic objects and transforms them into threatening sculptures as if revealing an undercurrent of hostility and danger lurking behind. These inhospitable environments challenge the viewer to question and rethink their relationship with the world around them. 
 
A cheese grater is scaled up to the size of a room divider aggressively cutting across the space (Paravent, 2008) or reimagined as a bed that spells-out discomfort and pain (Dormiente, 2008). Electricity courses through an assemblage of kitchen utensils displayed on a table turning the domestic into an environment full of dread (Home, 1999). A large wooden kitchen cabinet has been burnt to the core with the charred fragments barely held together by a delicate wire mesh (Remains (cabinet), 2019). 
 
Hatoum’s work never focuses on any specific conflict but remains centered on the universal experience of war and conflict and the trauma of exile and displacement that affects peoples’ lives. 

Cartography and mapping  

The world map is a subject that often appears in Hatoum's work. A perfect example is Hot Spot (2013), a large steel cage-like globe with the continents outlined in delicate red neon on its surface. In military jargon, a ‘hot spot’ represents an area of political or social unrest. With the whole globe buzzing with an intense red glow, Hatoum seems to imply that the entire planet is caught up in conflict and unrest and can also be seen as a poignant reference to global warming. In Folder (mobile) (2019), the continents of the world map are cut in sheet-glass and precariously suspended from the ceiling by thin cables. The airflow results in the continents constantly changing formation with the threat of disaster should the glass panels collide. Another globe, Orbital III (2018), is made of bent lengths of reinforcement bars forming the skeleton of a globe punctuated by clumps of rubble suggesting a world in a permanent state of destruction. 

Elleboogkerk 

For the Elleboogkerk in Amersfoort, Mona Hatoum created the newly commissioned installation Web (2025), a large-scale constellation of delicate, transparent glass spheres, threaded through wires to create the form of a spider’s web. Suspended overhead and extending to almost the entirety of the space, the seemingly precarious web appears both captivating and ominous. Web can be seen as a looming net which suggests oppressive entrapment, while simultaneously being a home or place of safety. This reminds us that spiders spin their webs in order to capture and entangle their prey. For Hatoum, the web also symbolises the interconnectedness of all things. The glass spheres sparkle like dew drops on a web, paradoxically seductive yet unnerving. Web offers a stark yet poetic reminder of the physical and psychological webs of entrapment we navigate in life. Hatoum has used the motif of the web, in varying materials, throughout her corpus, to explore themes of neglect, idleness, mobility and control. 

The title of the exhibition is taken from the work Inside Out (concrete) (2019), a ‘globe’, entirely covered by a circuitous pattern, reminiscent of intestines or the lobes of the brain. In this work Hatoum sets up a contradiction between the implied soft malleability of bodily forms and the object’s earthy construction in hard concrete. 
 
Mona Hatoum was born within a Palestinian family in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952 and has lived and worked in London since 1975. 

Selectie solotentoonstellingen: 

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlijn (2022); Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlijn (2022-23); KINDL – Centrum voor Hedendaagse Kunst, Berlijn (2022-23);  Magasin III, Stockholm (2022); Valencia Institute of Modern Art, Spanje (2021); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2017); Menil Collection, Houston, Texas en Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St Louis, MO (2017-18); Centre Georges Pompidou, Parijs, Tate Modern, Londen en Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2015-16); Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2014); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Zwitserland (2013); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2012); Beirut Art Centre (2010); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venetië (2009); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2005); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Magasin III, Stockholm en Kunstmuseum Bonn, Duitsland (alle 2004); Tate Britain, Londen (2000); Castello di Rivoli, Turijn (1999); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, getourd naar New Museum, New York (1997). 

Summary: 

Kunsthal KAdE toont het oeuvre van Mona Hatoum in het voorjaar van 2025. De tentoonstelling toont werk uit de hele carrière van de kunstenaar: van haar performance en video’s uit de jaren 1980 tot recente sculpturen, installaties en werken op papier. In haar sculpturen en installaties transformeert Hatoum bekende, alledaagse voorwerpen zoals stoelen, kinderbedjes en keukengerei tot werken die vreemd, gevaarlijk of zelfs bedreigend lijken. Ze gebruikt gevonden materialen om delicate, krachtige sculpturen te creëren die de kijker uitdagen om hun veronderstellingen over het woord om hen heen in vraag te stellen en te heroverwegen. 
 
Mona Hatoum was born within a Palestinian family in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952 and has lived and worked in London since 1975.