Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum
Interior Landscape
4 June – 20 September 2009

Palazzo Querini Stampalia
Venice, Santa Maria Formosa
Castello 5252

www.querinistampalia.it

On Thursday 4th June Fondazione Querini Stampalia will open a major solo exhibition of new and important works by Mona Hatoum. The exhibition, entitled Interior Landscape, will coincide with the opening of the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and will take place over two floors of the museum – both in the contemporary exhibition spaces as well as within the existing Museum collection in this historic building, formerly the home of the Querini Stampalia family. This exhibition will include over 25 works, many of which are new or previously unseen in Europe. It has been curated by Chiara Bertola in close consultation with the artist, and has been made possible by the partnership of Fondazione Furla, main partner, Regione del Veneto, institutional partner, and the special collaboration of Fondazione di Venezia.

A valuable contribution has been made by The British Council, London; Compagnia di San Paolo; Goethe-Institut, Mailand.

Her work addresses notions of displacement, uncertainty and conflict through the use of familiar, everyday domestic objects transformed into foreign, uncanny sculptures. Hatoum creates a domestic territory that is no longer the reassuring space of protection through the subversion of familiar forms such as chairs, beds and kitchen implements that transform her clean, minimalist forms into ciphers of ambiguity and threat.

New works in the exhibition include Interior Landscape (after which the exhibition is named), a haunting installation of bedroom furniture and domestic elements that imagines the conflict between the dreams and aspirations of a Palestinian individual juxtaposed with the harsh reality they have to face. Another large work created specifically for the space is a delicate and precariously suspended installation made of barbed wire. Hot Spot III is a metal globe with its continents outlined in glowing red neon shown in the proximity of what looks like an enlargement of a rosary or “worry beads” where the beads have been scaled up to the size of cannon balls. As well as these new works, Hatoum will be making a number of interventions in the museum collection using the furniture as the container or frame for some new ideas and some existing works which, when placed in this historic setting, generate different meanings.

The catalogue for the exhibition, in English and Italian, is published by Edizioni Charta and includes texts by Chiara Bertola and Réda Bensmaïa, Professor of Philosophy and French Literature at Brown University, USA. The publication will also include a series of previously unpublished photographs from Hatoum’s personal archives. A full illustration of the works on show will be inserted in a second edition of the catalogue that will be released soon after the opening of the exhibition.

Opening
Wednesday 3rd June 2009, h 6 p.m., on invitation
Dates
4 June – 20 September 2009
Times
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. – 7 p.m., Monday closed.

Information
Mona Hatoum. Interior Landscape press office
Alessandra Santerini, mob. +39 335 68 53 767, e-mail: alessandra.santerini@alice.it
Ilaria Gianoli, mob. +39 333 63 17 344, e-mail: ilariagianoli@tin.it

Fondazione Querini Stampalia press office
Sara Bossi phone +39 041 2711441, fax +39 041 2711445
e-mail: ufficiostampa@querinistampalia.org