Mona Hatoum

«I wanted to create works that privilege the formal and visual aspect of art making and try to articulate the political through the aesthetics of the work.» Mona Hatoum (born 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon; lives and works in London and Berlin) first became widely known in the mid-1980´s for a series of performances and videos which focused with great intensity on the body. Since the 90´s, her work has moved increasingly towards large-scale installations which aim to engage the viewer in conflicted emotions of desire and revulsion, fear and fascination. In the photo illustrated here, the artist was intrigued by the close neighborhood of enemy ideologies found in an idyllic everyday street scene in Venice.