Mona Hatoum

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Mona Hatoum (born 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a performance artist of Palestinian origin who moved to London in 1975. Trained at both the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Art between the years 1975 and 1981. In 1995 she was nominated for the Turner Prize for her exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and for her show at the White Cube.

In the early 1980s Hatoum began her artistic career with performance pieces, though later she moved from 'live' work to more mechanical installations, involving video, light, and sound. While mostly focusing on confrontational themes such as violence, oppression, and voyeurism, she has often made powerful references to the vulnerability and resistance, of our human bodies.

During a visit to London in 1975, civil war broke out in Lebanon and she was forced into exile. With this shadow on her shoulders, her early works can be seen as a metaphor for eternal conflict and resistance.

In 1989 Hatoum exhibited her first major scuptural work 'The Light At the End' in the Showroom Gallery. The same piece was shown the following year in the British Art Show.

In 1997, one of Hatoum's works which had been purchased by Charles Saatchi was included in the Sensation exhibition which toured London, Berlin and New York.

In 2000, her work The Entire World as a Foreign Land was at the inaugural launch of the Tate Britain. She had a work called Home at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in 2004.