Introduction
Light Sentence (1992) is a famous artwork produced by Mona Hatoum. Like many other artists of the time, Hatoum used art to express her views on socio-political issues pertaining to society. The Aesthetica Magazine (2016) presents her work as a combination of “radical thinking, perseverance and unapologetic responses to personal and universal issues” (para. 1). Light Sentence is an intriguing piece of art that can be interpreted in many different ways. It reflects political uncertainty and challenges the concepts of national and personal identity with the use of light, shadow, and structure (Aesthetica Magazine, 2016). The present paper will seek to compare and contrast Light Sentence to the movements of the 20th century.
About Mona Hatoum
Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut in 1952 into a Palestinian family. Since childhood, she was exposed to the dark side of politics and war. To escape the stress and horrors of war, Hatoum moved to London, where she began to explore different forms of art and design (Spence, 2016). Moving to a different country allowed Hatoum to express herself more freely, and she soon found a way of communicating her views and feelings through creating art. The works she produced reflect a whole variety of conflicts that were happening in the world at the time (Ayad, 2015). Throughout her upbringing and adult life, Hatoum had acquired many ideas about gender and race. Her background largely accounted for her interest in politics. In particular, Hatoum sought to explore the effect of political and social issues on individuals.
During her lifetime, Mona Hatoum created a variety of artworks that were highly appreciated due to the real meaning behind them rather than their visual quality. It is safe to say that most of her work was in one way or another based on political or social issues. Linden (2016) states that “Hatoum’s works mine geopolitics, gender, art history, and her own past to reveal a world that is frightening and complex” (para. 1).
Her performances in the 1980s presented installations and sculptures made using a wide range of different materials and objects, including steel cages, sandbag walls, and wires, as well as household objects, scaled up for the purpose of creating meaning. The complexity of Hatoum’s work reflects sociopolitical conflicts that she witnessed throughout her life. Similar to some other works, Light Sentence presents an enigmatic installation using the complex structure and shadow patterns to convey meaning.
Light Sentence
Light Sentence was produced by Mona Hatoum in 1992 and was one of her earliest works. It was made from two sets of galvanized wire mesh lockers, an electric motor, and one light bulb located within a 198 cm by 185 cm by 490 cm space. Due to the light bulb located between them, the two mesh lockers are duplicated several times by the shadows that appear on the surrounding walls (Corwin, 2016). The light bulb rises and lowers at a slow pace, changing the reflection slightly. Light Sentence was originally exhibited at Centre Pompidou, part of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France. In 2016, it was included in the exhibition of Hatoum’s works in Tate Modern in London, the United Kingdom (Nayeri, 2015).
Looking at this artwork, it is difficult to focus on a single aspect of it. It seems like the light, the metal mesh lockers, and the shadows are part of a single organism. However, as one continues to explore the installation, it is possible to notice that each of the three parts of the work plays a different role, helping to create a deeper meaning. Light Sentence unites contrasting concepts in one by linking light and shadow, isolation and unity, and small with large. It is possible to see how each cell of the mesh lockers serves to produce a larger and more complex shadow, thus enhancing the power communicated by the work. This concept is relevant to the sociopolitical movements of the 20th century since it was a period that united many different people in one fight for human rights and freedom.
The 20th Century Art
The 20th century was one of the most complex periods of the history of art that incorporated a wide variety of movements and events. This was the time when abstraction started to grow more popular in the world of art, along with several other movements that took art to another level. These movements include Dadaism, surrealism, minimalism, and more. Modern art and design were significantly inspired and influenced by these movements, which prompts us to relate modern artwork to different movements in the history of art across the globe.
Political and Social Context
In the 20th century, most designers and artists abandoned organic drawing and acquired a new art and design philosophy that allowed them to experiment with different issues, including social, economic, and cultural. New forms and styles allowed them to express their thoughts and feelings more freely, as well as to address numerous political issues. Various concepts from the 20th-century art movements, such as Dadaism and surrealism, are also evident in the various artworks of Mona Hatoum.
During her study at the Slade School of Art, she explored the importance of socio-political context in art and learned new means of stating her ideas and beliefs, such as performance, installations, and film (Lindey, 2016). Along with other artists of the time, she expressed the theme of home and displacement through the perspective of the Palestine exile in Light Sentence.
The Narrative of War
The installation represents cage-like wires that resemble issues of war and their impact on individuals that become trapped in a violent crisis. The idea of the cage incorporates the motifs of violence and containment that obviously reflect Hatoum’s feelings towards her home and the war. In some ways, the installation showcases the artist’s internal world.
The visually alluring, dizzying feeling that the shadows give you when the light moves and the shadows reduplicate on the surrounding walls is a concept in itself. It could be a representation of what Hatoum felt being away from home. The materials used in the work contribute to an uncomfortable narrative of war and produce a vivid image of violence along with the human condition resulting from it. Hatoum transformed the wire mesh into visual poetry, inserting the viewers into the narrative and creating an active engagement with them rather than allowing for passive consumption. The title of the work itself, “light sentence”, reinforces the allusion to imprisonment. However, in contrast with the theme of war and incarceration, the installation presents a distinctive source of light, which can be viewed as a representation of hope.
Gender Issues
Hatoum was one of the female artists that resisted sexist culture and fought for women’s rights. The new ways of expressing ideas through different art forms were received well in Europe, and that freed female artists from the oppression of the male traditions in sculpture and painting, which also correlated with the Dadaism movement. In her work, Hatoum also fights against socio-political injustice and oppression by allowing multi-layered associations and contradictions, such as the layers and shadows in Light Sentence. Indeed, this artwork can also be seen as reflecting the feminist ideology.
Women’s rights movements were popular throughout the 20th century, and thus Hatoum could also use the installation to portray the key concepts of feminism. For instance, the cells could be seen as the representation of oppression, whereas the light might be a symbol of freedom that is not available to those imprisoned in the cells. Although such a representation does comply with the realities of the oppression before women’s rights movements, the artwork also contrasts the idea of feminism by making the movement appear fragmented and thus, powerless.
Minimalism
Minimalism was also one of the movements in the 20th century that influenced an immense number of artists and designers. Minimalism is a style that refers to works of art that consist of simple geometric shapes and lack decor or dynamics (“Minimalism,” n.d.). Modern art has progressed toward minimalism as the simplest form of abstract art possible. Today, artists are still using minimalism and its techniques to produce artworks that have some visual beauty and provide aesthetic satisfaction, all the while producing messages about social and political issues for the viewers of paintings and installations. Minimalism is characteristically connected to sculpture rather than to painting, which is why it relates to Mona Hatoum’s productions and installations.
Similar to minimalism and the 20th-century art movement as a whole, Mona used geometric form, repeated to create a complex pattern, in Light Sentence. She experimented with the design using materials and light, as well as unusual production methods to produce original visual elegance. The installation is simple and lacks any visuals besides those produced by the structure and lighting. Here, as in many other minimalist works, the lack of decor draws attention to the meaning of the work, prompting the viewers to think about its key messages. Besides, the simplicity of the installation serves to highlight its essential elements, making the shadows more prominent. This helps to engage the viewers and immerse them in the environment created by the work.
In her exploration of minimalism, Hatoum is quite similar to a German artist, architect, and designer Peter Behrens. Behrens was an important figure in art and design in the 20th century, as he played a major role in the development of design and was considered to be the first industrial architect. Many scholars admit that Behrens was one of the first designers to introduce the concept of minimalism (Francisco, 2017). He experimented with designs and manufactured simple items, like teapots and street lamps.
Both Hatoum and Behrens took a strong interest in industrial design. Behrens sought to create items that could be useful in everyday life. Hatoum, on the other hand, enlarged these items and used them in some of her installations to convey the meaning and message behind her work. Also, it is important to note that Behrens designed and produced items using a grid system to structure space. Most of his work was based on geometric composition, grids, squares, circles, and many more variations of shapes and patterns that served to divide and duplicate the basic structure. He also explored formal geometric design motifs with modular san-serif characters based on a square.
In Light Sentence, Mona Hatoum applies the same technique of grids and duplications using different materials such as threads, wires, and lights. The artist used grids in many of her works, but it is Light Sentence where they are the most prominent elements of design. In general, the installation does compare to the key concepts and principles of minimalism. It uses few materials and structures yet sends a powerful message to the audience. However, the complexity of form that uses many separate cells and small grids to divide the space somewhat contrasts the ideas of minimalism. The shadows reflected on the walls move up and down instead of remaining in one place, which also increases the visual load of the work and opposes the minimalism movement.
Conclusion
Overall, it is clear that Hatoum was determined to share her unique vision of the world through her artwork and was brave enough to explore the most pressing sociopolitical issues of the time. Hatoum produced work that expressed her ideas and used a variety of forms, mediums, and techniques to share her message with the audience.
At some point in their life, every modern artist faces a question of how to express their ideas in order to be understood and heard while at the same time maintaining their individual style. The artwork produced by Mona Hatoum rejected reproduction and traditional art techniques and forms in favor of new means of expression, using performance, installations, and films to portray her vision of the world. Refraining from using traditional art forms allowed the artist to focus on her personal experiences and their meaning in the context of the 20th century.
With her open and creative mind and imagination, Hatoum used art to express her progressive ideas and respond to the issues affecting the world and society around her. Her artistic involvement in sociopolitical issues was marked by her acute moral judgment along with the sense of beauty and passion, equipping her works with both the aesthetic and meaning.
A detailed analysis of Light Sentence shows that the work explores strong concepts and uses a layered technique to portray several major issues at once. From the material to the concept, to the lighting, and to the form, Light Sentence is a unique artwork that offers insight not just into Hatoum’s life, but into the 20th century as a whole. The concept of the work reflects the influence of the 20th-century art movements, particularly minimalism and Dadaism. Her sense of minimalism is similar to Peter Behrens in the style of geometry and grids, as well as the technique of duplication of grids and patterns. On the whole, exploring various styles of modern art allowed Hatoum to experiment with different forms, materials, and concepts to find out the best way to convey meaning to the audience.
References
Aesthetica Magazine. (2016). Mona Hatoum: Poetic and political, Tate Modern, London. Web.
Ayad, M. (2015). Fearless artist Mona Hatoum conquers the Pompidou with four decades of work. Artsy. Web.
Corwin, W. (2016). Mona Hatoum. The Brooklyn Rail. Web.
Francisco, A. (2017). Minimalism: How less generated more. Web.
Linden, G. (2016). The chilling, anxious world of Mona Hatoum. Hyperallergic. Web.
Lindey, C. (2016). A protest against injustice: The art of Mona Hatoum. Web.
Minimalism. (n.d.).
Nayeri, F. (2015). The many contradictions of Mona Hatoum. The New York Times. Web.
Spence, R. (2016). Mona Hatoum, Tate Modern, London, review — ‘Triumphant’. Financial Times. Web.