Mona Hatoum «Continental Drift» 2000.

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Submitted by mona.hatoum on Tue, 2006-03-14 15:47.

Mona Hatoum, Continental Drift, 2000
Continental Drift (detail), 2000
stainless steel, glass, iron filings, electric motor, timer, 33 x 420 cm diameter
Tate Britain
Photo: Edward Woodman.

«Hatoum's second work at the Tate, titled Continental Drift, is a horizontal map of the world in clear plastic with metal filings filling the seas. A magnetized bar circles like a watch's second hand below, creating a tidal 'wave' of filings, which lap up onto the continents. Is this a hint of global warming and flooding?»

Mona Hatoum, interview by Edward Said, The Entire World as a Foreign Land, Tate, 2000
The Entire World as a Foreign Land
Sheena Wagstaff and Edward Said, Tate Publishing, 2000.

«These works exhibit under the title The Entire World as a Foreign Land develop Hatoum's interest in the relationship between individual identity and the notion of a broader cultural and geographic identity, or sense of 'belonging'. In this interview, the artist talks vividly about the centrality of the body to her installations, and the way in which her work employs changes of scale, intimations of restriction and constrain and contradictory ideas of attraction and repulsion.»

Mona Hatoum, Map, 1998
Map, 1998
glass marbles, Basel.

Urs Steiner and Samuel Herzog: «Is that also true of Map, the work with the marbles which you showed in 1998 in Basel? You created an enormous map of the world on the floor of the atrium in the Kunsthalle using marbles.»

Mona Hatoum: «In contrast to the map in Jerusalem , that was a world without any borders. But the map was very fragile: as soon as one set foot on the parquet, the marbles on the floor started moving. At the same time, the work was very menacing. I like it when things are attractive and forbidding at the same time; both seductive and dangerous. The marbles made the floor hazardous, because you could slip on the glass balls and fall down. I've done quite a few works which destabilize the ground you walk on.»

sources: iniva.org, artnet.com, lacentral.com, montrealserai.com

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