Mona Hatoum at the Tate Modern: are female artists saving the future of contemporary art?

Linda Nochlin, the originator of feminist art history, once asked the thorny question (to men, at least): “Why have there been no great women artists?” This was in 1971 (and published in ArtNews). Nearly half a century later the question is still relevant. In Nochlin’s summary, she pinpointed the need for the institutional (by which she meant the public) to engage with, encourage and accept parity between the sexes in the realm of art and, by implication, every other aspect of commerce, culture and political governance. Today, with feminist adapted structures still evolving, Mona Hatoum, arguably one of the most celebrated, living, British female artists, appears to have no “inner demons of self-doubt”, which Nochlin warned was a problem that could hold anyone back from developing their creative potentials.

 

Indeed, Hatoum’s CV is testament to the recognition of her as an artist of great relevance and importance, irrespective of her gender. And now she has her second Tate gallery show (the first was at Tate Britain in 2000, her first major one-person show in the UK) which provides ample evidence of institutional acceptance. Furthermore, as this review for CFA was in preparation, it was announced that Hatoum is the recipient of the ‘2016 School of the Museum of Fine Arts Medal’, Boston.

 

But still, the notion of the ‘great’ female artist is the exception rather than the rule.

 

However, this new exhibition will come as no surprise to Hatoum’s admirers, as the Tate appears enamoured of Conceptual Art this year. For, also at Tate Modern, and on the same floor as ‘Mona Hatoum’, one can see ‘Performing For The Camera’; whilst at Tate Britain, “Conceptual Art in Britain’ currently obliges the visitor to walk through Pablo Bronstein’s, ‘Historical Dances in an Antique Setting’, a site-specific dance/performance work made in response to the cavernous Duveen Galleries.

 

If Conceptual art is your thing you also have to visit Damien Hirst’s gallery at Newport Street, where ‘Jeff Koons: Now’ has just opened. In fact, the parallel nature of Koon’s career and Hatoum’s is interesting, as both exhibitions represent 35 years of ‘productive’ endeavour; and their debt to Duchamp and the readymade is central to their respective practices. Born in the 1950s, both are baby-boomers of a sort. Although Hatoum’s enforced exile from her Lebanese homeland (as a Palestinian) adds an acute self-determinism, forged out of abject crisis. In stark contrast, the more extravert and Pop-inspired commercial success of Koons as an artist, stems partly from his brief career (after studying art) as a commodities broker. Both artists’ modus operandi exudes self-belief, and if we are willing to accept that works of art can possess contrasting personalities, these two near contemporaries make for fascinating comparisons. If Koons’ art extols the kitch-surreal, and a celebration of the ego; then Hatoum embraces the psychological-surreal and a more seriously collective imperative that has strong ethical resonances.

 

Also, what these current exhibitions demonstrate is that ‘conceptual art’ is as diverse as any other category of the visual arts; and the development of the predominance of ‘ideas’, transformed into situations, actions, documents and objects, persists. Hatoum’s oeuvre is typically diverse, especially evident from seeing the 88 works from a career approaching, hopefully, its mid-point. On a simplistic level, her work could be categorised as Minimalist and Conceptual, especially since 1988 when she shifted from Performance practice to Installation and Sculpture – typically making artworks consisting of objects and materials, re-presented, re-categorised and re-formulated from the manufactured world.

 

The implicit matter-of-factness of Minimalist/Conceptualist art can take the viewer in one of two directions: either sparking off lateral associations, employing the imagination and making often Surreal or broad cultural and intellectual connections; or alternatively, such work can be quite dry – being literally what it is without illusion or allusion, concretely straight forward, no-more-no less, specifically just that.

 

Undoubtedly, Hatoum’s work meets the former description. She may in fact be a latter-day Surrealist, formed (as she would admit) from the tradition of Magritte, via Piero Manzoni and Eva Hesse. She also operates from a political and feminist perspective, with her form of activism played out in the field of contemporary art.

 

Displayed in non-chronological order, Hatoum’s diverse output, in this timely retrospective (as conflict permeates our world, at home and abroad), confirms the artist’s non-hierarchical attitude to forms and media. Human hair, wax, fabrics, various metals, glass and light provide the ingredients for her work. Certainly, the ‘concept’ is the driver for these public displays of fecund forms and fascinating configurations. Her ideas are expertly transformed into ‘spectacles’ that combine the notion that the personal is political; the individual is the whole of humanity – whatever the differences in gender, ethnicity and identity; and that the all-too-human obsession with conflict and power structures objectify the drama of life on earth. In the context of the potential fate of the planet, human behaviour and psychological perversity seem trivial and fleetingly time-bound, yet this tragicomedy is still inescapably horrifying, if at times humorous.

 

Interestingly, whilst the arrangement at the Tate is not the product of a ‘scatter-gun’ approach, the display eschews any sense that the artist must constantly move on, taking the viewer with them. For example, a recorded performance such as ‘Roadworks’ is surely as relevant now as it was back in 1985, when she made the 6’45” video with the Brixton Artist Collective. The viewer can read this time-based performance from a ‘second generation’ feminist viewpoint; or alternatively, in terms of questioning a continuing state of ‘class struggle’ and political oppression, that to varying degrees, still resonates in all societies today. Also, you could be briefly amused and entertained by ‘Roadworks’ as the performer (an angry and emotionally ‘raw’, Hatoum) drags her de rigueur Dr Marten boots, tied to her ankles like shackles, through a south London street. As the on-looking audience, mostly elderly white working class, mixed with first or second generation black ‘immigrants’, who are socially and economically contained in their daily shopping environment, look bemused or joyfully fascinated; only to become unintentional part-players in the drama. For lack of a better phrase, ‘viewing the shoppers watching the wacky artist’, might initially form the first reaction to this piece; but give it some thought and significantly more profound interpretations are set off: who are the oppressed, or the marginal, today? And why does this young woman look so frustrated and angry?

 

To select a few more of the works on display, before seeing ‘Roadworks’, we are emphatically confronted by the monolithic, ‘Socle du Monde’ [1992-3], which is placed at the entrance to the show. Embodied as a dense black cube, the surface looks velvety soft and organic, possibly imitating some genus of sea-life. But this bold monochrome presence is composed of a skin of iron filings that are held in place by magnets hidden by the steel cube beneath. This first example we see of Hatoum’s work demonstrates her desire to blend physical form with invisible but active energy: she is programmatically disposed to combine rather than separate the mind and body, which places her outside of the ‘modern’ European tradition, and, perhaps ironically but healthily, links her to her cultural and spiritual, Arab background.

 

As a viewer, one might feel invited in to ‘Corps étranger’ (‘Foreign Body’) [1994], a video made from the probing of an endoscopic medical camera inside her body. The cylindrical booth that we enter entraps us as, in a voyeuristic sense, by viewing the images we violate this woman’s body both visually, and physically, by walking on the image projected onto the gallery floor. ‘Foreign body’ has a double meaning too: the camera literally occupies the inner body of a woman who might seem physically and psychologically ‘foreign’, especially to a male; or on a more prosaic level, be a ‘foreigner’ from another country or culture – despite our shared, biological make up.

 

Occasionally there is some momentary relief from the seriousness of Hatoum’s output, and one could be intrigued by the suspended scarves in ‘Twelve Windows’ [2012-13]. This presentation consists essentially of colourful, one-metre-square, hand-embroidered fabrics made by Inaash, a collective of Palestinian women from refugee camps in Lebanon. But the installation cannot be entered, or the fabrics handled or worn – as if we too should feel exclusion from our own cultural and political space: we can look, but touching and embracing is forbidden by circumstance. 1948 was such a long time ago.

 

Fascination gives way to a feeling of being unsettled by two stand-alone sculptures, ‘Grater Divide’ [2002], a mild-steel, giant cheese grater enlarged to human height; and ‘Daybed’ [2008], a black finished steel ‘camp bed’ that only a masochist would choose to lie down on. These surreal, confrontational pieces unsettle the nerves – and the skin. Innocent objects convey the irrationality of the human condition.

 

Momentarily amused by ‘Jardin Public’ [1993], a wrought iron garden chair of French design, further reveals the Surrealist nature of much of Hatoum’s output, and explicitly, but simply, references female physical sexuality in a superficial form, conjoining ‘public’ with ‘pubic’. But we might think again, before taking a seat.

 

‘Undercurrent (red)’ [2008], displayed on the gallery floor, consisting of a loosely but precisely woven ‘carpet’, that creates a red textile ‘energy field’, or framework, of electric cables, suggests a homely, domestic, territory. The centre square that disperses into a surrounding, circular maze of blood red, vein-like curlicues, invites the viewer onto the carpet: but there’s a catch of course, as the outer border of the ‘fabric’ is protected by 60 or more, 15-watt light bulbs that increase and decrease in subtle power surges, as if the piece were breathing and potentially calming or unsettling the viewer.

 

With terrain and territory in mind, the large glowing red orb that is ‘Hot Spot III’ [2009], presents a steel, cage-like, globe, consisting of 47 neon sections, wired up to ten transformers. It is about an adult’s height, tilted at the same 23-degree angle as the earth’s axis. ‘Hot Spot’ might prompt thoughts of global warming, but in fact references contested borders, and territories of global conflict and unrest. ‘Hot spot’ is a term frequently heard on TV news channels – and they are places to avoid.

 

Finally, in this brief and selective survey, the quietly unsettling, ‘Impenetrable’ [2009], where the wondering gallery-goer could temptingly be invited in, displays Hatoum’s preference for simplicity of presentation. But, on closer inspection, the straight rods of black barbed wire, suspended with fishing line, dissuades us to enter. The barbs are actually quite short, as if to entice with just a hint of threat, but in fact to ensure that we maintain a necessary distance.

 

Domains, from the personally physical and psychological; or geo-politically formed, permeate this exhibition. So be careful – your passport to freedom may be invalid in Hatoum’s world – although her world-view, constructed out of painful exile, seems open to questioning prejudice.

May 24, 2016