Mona Hatoum
Hot Spot, 2006
Stainless steel and neon tube
234 x 223 cm
Mona Hatoum’s work explores conflicts and contradiction through installations, sculpture, video, photography and works on paper. While visiting London from Lebanon in 1975, the Lebanese civil war broke out leaving her stranded and with a sense of dislocation which often feeds into her work; the war would last for fifteen years.
Hatoum began making installations and sculptures in the late 1980’s. The grids and geometric forms in her work often refer to political and social systems of control. Hot Spot, 2006 is a globe made of steel rods with red neon delineating the continents, the world appears ablaze with an ominous energy.
The title of the piece refers to the term ‘hot spot’ meaning a place of political unrest, conflict or war. Hot Spot, 2006 proposes that conflict and unrest are not restricted to specific areas and contested border zones. As Hatoum observes the world is ‘continually caught up in conflict and unrest’. (White Cube, 2006)