Mona Hatoum: Over, under and in between

“Over, under and in between” is a site-specific project conceived by artist Mona Hatoum for Fondazione Prada in Milan that reflect on the turmoil of our times and the precariousness of our existence.

The three installations comprising this solo presentation explore archetypal elements of Hatoum’s artistic vocabulary: the web, the map, and the grid. Their presence reactivates the space of the Cisterna building, which housed the silos and tanks of the former alcohol distillery, once located on the Fondazione Prada’s compound. The three independent works embody ideas of instability, danger, and fragility to varying degrees of intensity and sensibility, creating a dialogue with the space and, in particular, the viewer’s physical experience.

In the entrance room of the Cisterna, a large-scale constellation of delicate, transparent, hand-blown glass spheres threaded through wires forms a spider’s web suspended overhead. In the last few decades, Hatoum has often used the web motif to explore themes such as entrapment, idleness, neglect, familiar ties, and connectedness. As underlined by the artist, “A web can be seen as a looming net which suggests oppressive entrapment, while also providing a home or a place of safety. To me, the large web overhead also has poetic, even cosmic significance. The beautiful, delicate glass spheres are an apt reference to dew drops, evoking their fragility and sparkling quality. They also resemble a celestial constellation. I personally like to see it as an allusion to the interconnectedness of all things.”

The concrete floor in the central room of the Cisterna is covered with large areas of translucent red glass balls arranged in the shape of a world map. Political and geographical borders have been intentionally ignored here, with only the continents delineated. More than thirty thousand glass balls, which are not fixed to the floor, form an unstable configuration that the artist describes as “a loose and undefined territory,” which is potentially susceptible to destabilising external forces.

As Austrian architect and theorist Theo Deutinger states in his text written for the exhibition publication, “A globe is not a map. A globe misses flattening and with it the ability to fold it up or roll it and to put it in the pocket. And the globe does not allow us to see planet Earth all at once. A map is Earth’s skin, peeled off and flattened.” However, the visualisation of the world as a map is not entirely neutral, as it has historically incorporated political power dynamics and reflected systems of domination. This is why Hatoum made the subtle yet conceptually rigorous decision to use the Gall-Peters projection rather than the more traditional Mercator projection in her work. This map rectified the distortions of relative sizes of certain territories present in the Mercator projection, which made wealthier continents, such as Europe and North America, appear larger than poorer ones, such as Africa and South America.

The third room of the Cisterna houses the kinetic installation all of a quiver. Resting on the floor and animated by a motorised mechanism, this gridded metallic structure slowly oscillates between downward collapse and re-erection. Sounds of creaking and clanking accompany each row of cubes as the structure sways and zigzags down as if slumping—almost like a body—towards destruction. all of a quiver demonstrates Hatoum’s fascination with Minimalist aesthetics and her ability to transform modular and basic structures into living forms. These forms are rooted in bodily experience and evoke a plurality of emotional memories and feelings, including unease, claustrophobia, and a sense of no escape. With its cyclical movement, this work symbolises a state of precariousness, a never-ending suspension between opposing human conditions, such as construction and destruction, levitation and collapse, resistance and fragility. As Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh writes in her text, all of a quiver “teaches us that to stand is not to conquer instability, but to inhabit it. By demonstrating an openness to change rather than a need to master it, the trembles of all of a quiver are a lesson in humility.”