Mona Hatoum: ‘Art is a way of thinking of myself without restrictions’

Portrait by Amit Lennon

You’ve transformed the Barbican gallery into a strange, unsettling domestic space. Why do you so often return to the idea of the home as a site of both comfort and danger?

My family’s history is one of living with the trauma of displacement and loss of home, so I grew up with a sense of dislocation and I’ve felt it ever since. I have a work at the Barbican called Remains of the Day, which is a set of charred furniture held together only by chicken wire. It was made after being given the Hiroshima art prize in 2017 and was a direct comment on the [atomic bombing of] Hiroshima; but at the same time, I like the fact that when you show it in London, it could be about the Grenfell Tower.

When did you first encounter Giacometti’s work?

By reading Georges Bataille in the early 80s. Like me, Giacometti engaged with surrealism and at one point it got very sexual, very Bataille-like. One of his works that I’ve always admired, Woman with Her Throat Cut, is this really grotesque, dismembered figure; it was the first piece I wanted to include in the exhibition.

Why were you so keen to include it?

It has an aspect of the surreal but there’s something ambiguous about it. It could be a trap or an aggressive scorpion; it could be useful or harmful; it’s attractive and repulsive.

Growing up, you were ineligible for Lebanese citizenship due to your Palestinian heritage. How did that experience shape your worldview?

There were a lot of contradictions. We lived in a Christian part of east Beirut because my father insisted we attend a Greek Orthodox school, whereas the rest of the family lived in west Beirut, the Muslim side. Our school was French-speaking and everybody else attended an English school. So there was a feeling that we were foreign, even within the Palestinian community.

Were you creative in school?

I was a daydreamer; I was always doodling in my notebooks. My father created a very serious and studious atmosphere at home, so I remember the joy of going to kindergarten and finding myself able to make these huge drawings on the blackboard and playing with paint. It was a big release. No one was into art in the family, except a cousin who was a Sunday painter and took classes. Otherwise everybody was academic.

Did pursuing art feel like a rebellion?

It was a way of thinking of myself without restrictions. Within art you can imagine anything you like; it’s a world that’s limitless, and that’s where I wanted to be. My father wanted me to do something that would guarantee a job.

You’ve said in the past that you think best when on the move. Why?

I was a very active kid and I don’t like the feeling of being stuck in a space. I think it’s also to do with my parents, who were devoted to us, and to each other; they never spent a single night apart in the 40 years they lived together. It was this kind of situation, and I wanted to be out.

Is that why you like to split your time living between London and Berlin?

Berlin is a big city but it feels like a village and it’s much slower-moving than London. There aren’t so many demands on my time and I can concentrate so well during the day that I feel the right to go out at night and have fun with friends. It reminds me of how we lived in Lebanon.

How has the ongoing conflict in Gaza affected your work?

How it will affect my work is the least of my concerns. It has changed my entire outlook on the world, shaken my belief in the possibility of justice and human rights, and devastated the lives of millions of people. Such tragedies take generations to process. I am still trying to come to terms with the horrific images of the 1982 massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, which have haunted me ever since.

In your 1982 performance Under Siege, you concealed yourself naked for several hours in a glass box filled with clay. What are your memories of that work?

The reception was very reactionary. The press misrepresented the whole performance as being about nudity before it even happened. It’s when I started mistrusting the press and anybody who interviewed me. One newspaper described it as “about as edifying as a pig wallowing in mud”. The funny thing is, a few days after the performance, Israel invaded Lebanon and Beirut was literally under siege, but they didn’t make any reference to that.

You continued performance art until the late 1980s. Do you ever miss it?

Not really. I was convinced that performance was something very revolutionary, being critical of the art world and its commercialism. It suited my character at the time: I was restless, and I couldn’t afford a studio so the improvisation of performance suited me too.

You’ve said that you’ve always had a rebellious attitude. Does that flame of rebellion still burn as brightly now?

I still feel a rebellion against institutional structures. I normally go to America once a year but I didn’t this year because it’s scary. I’m certainly aware of barriers and borders and restrictions of movement growing more and more.

Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum is at the Barbican from 3 September to 11 January 2026