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- Place made
- London
- Medium
- compressed card, plastic, metal, beeswax, human hair
- Dimensions
- 48.0 x 65.0 x 68.0 cm
- Credit line
- Lillemor Andersen Bequest Fund 2007
- Accession number
- 20078S35(a&b)
- Signature and date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Media category
- Sculpture
- Collection area
- British sculptures
- Copyright
- © Mona Hatoum
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Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut to Palestinian parents exiled from Haifa. In 1975, at the age of twenty-three, Hatoum herself became an exile, when she was stranded in England by the war in Lebanon. An exploration of cultural displacement, the homeland, exile, migration, the foreigner, borders and language is consequently central to Hatoum’s artistic practice. As she explained: ‘being the daughter of displaced people makes home feel insecure and unsafe. So you develop an ambiguous relationship both to home and the idea of homeland’.
A signature example of Hatoum’s work, Traffic speaks to these experiences. The artist typically draws on the everyday, using recognisable and familiar objects, which she then transforms into unsettling sculptures. The pair of worn suitcases tethered together by strands of human hair becomes a metaphor for the body and illicit movement across borders.
Leigh Robb, Curator of Contemporary Art
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Mona Hatoum’s artistic practice is underpinned by her own life experiences. As she recalls:
I grew up in Beirut in a family that had suffered a tremendous loss and existed with a sense of dislocation. When I went to London in 1975 for what was meant to be a brief visit, I got stranded there because the war broke out in Lebanon, and that created another kind of dislocation.
(Mona Hatoum, BOMB Magazine, 1998)
Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family living in exile in Lebanon. Unable to obtain Lebanese identity cards, her family became naturalised British subjects. In 2003–04, after having lived in London for almost thirty years, Hatoum undertook a residency in Berlin. Since then she has been living between London and Berlin.
Traffic, like much of Mona Hatoum’s work, explores ideas of exile, migration, cultural displacement and loss.
Julie Robinson, Senior Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs