Mona Hatoun

(Pulling my Leg?)

BBC radio 3 interview.

She is a Palestinian artist who looks deals with sculptor, conceptual and situational art.

1995- She was short listed for the turner prize with Pulling my leg? Where she had a two video’s of a woman’s head and shoulders sleeping then with the a pony tail under it. The picture shows a person pulling the pony tail and the woman walking up. I find this quit comical, might need to find out more information.

When she was a school in Beirut, France they didn’t have art as a lesson. With the only time that they got to do art was when they copied poems out from a book and they were allowed to make illustrations on the opposite page. Also in Since when they were allowed to make drawings of cells. She also used to marvel over the grate masterpieces where she first seen them in the back of Larouse French to French Dictionary

Her father was also very agents her becoming an artist, wanting her to go to uni to get a real degree and get a real job. To satisfy her father she did a 2 year course in graphic design then worked in an office for another two years. Still wanting her pation for being an artist she moved to London were she when to art school.

Her fist work that she did she wanted her work the effect people through experience through the body. She also had a fascination of using electricity in her work. It would crackle and give a scene of danger.

She did an installation of house hold objects with electricity going through each of them with small light bulbs at the bottom (hidden away) to let people know that it was on! She liked the idea of home being a threat rather than a safe place. Trying to expose contradictions in the situation of something maybe hiding something else maybe that question of losing the stable environment and longing for it, like almost home becoming a kind of like prison. She wanted people to walk away with more questions than answers.

Light at the end of the tunnel- this was a piece the you would walk along a corridor towards the light then when you got up close you would realise that it was electric heater that could burn you badly. That gave the impetion of a prison gate suggesting torch our, pain, it’s a curl image, however it pirty in the same way.