Mona HatoumIncommunicado 1993

Hatoum was born in Beirut to Palestinian parents who were living in exile because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1975, as a young woman visiting London, she was herself exiled from her homeland when war broke out in Lebanon and she was not able to return for many years. She attended art school in London (Byam Shaw School of Art 1975-79; Slade School of Art 1979-81), making work informed by her experience of living away from her home and family as well as by the political conflict in the Middle East. Themes of dispossession, displacement, claustrophobia and controlled violence are common in her work… (read more)