Symposium
Critical Distance. Body Politics and Displacement in the Work of Mona Hatoum
29 October, 2 pm
In English
Free admission

Held in conjunction with the survey exhibition of the work of Mona Hatoum, this international symposium offers insight into the artist’s oeuvre. With her interest in articulating concerns through a reductive approach and abstract language, Hatoum is considered a prominent representative of Postminimalism, taking the visual code of Minimal Art and deconstructing or expanding it in a targeted manner.

By transforming everyday objects and materials in an unexpected way and linking her presentations to feminist discourses and body politics, Hatoum broadens the notion of sculpture from questions of materiality to critical thinking. Her long engagement with themes of exclusion and exile, changing notions of gender and race, and, not least, the body itself, provides new perspectives on contemporary debates and current political discourse. The symposium will deal with the notion of sculpture’s engagement in sociopolitical perspectives, the development of sculpture in an increasingly digital age, new attitudes towards the body and the uncertain and precarious conditions of our world.

The three-part exhibition Mona Hatoum is on view at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (September 15 – November 13, 2022), Georg Kolbe Museum (September 15, 2022 – January 8, 2023), and KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art (September 18, 2022 – May 14, 2023).
Curators: Marius Babias, Kathrin Becker, Julia Wallner

Schedule

2 p.m.
Opening: Kathrin Becker (Artistic Director, KINDL – Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst), Marius Babias (Director, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein)

Artist presentation: Mona Hatoum (Artist, London)

4 p.m.
Panel discussion: With Sam Bardaouil (Director, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin), Tamar Garb (Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art, University College London), Polly Staple (Curator and Director of Collection, British Art at Tate, London), moderation: Natasha Ginwala (Associate Curator at Large, Gropius Bau, Berlin)

Participants
Sam Bardaouil has been the director of Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, together with Till Fellrath, since 2022. In 2009, they founded the multidisciplinary curatorial platform artReoriented in New York and Munich. The duo curated the 16th Lyon Biennale (2022) and the French pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) and were associate curators at Gropius Bau in Berlin from 2017 to 2021. Bardaouil and Fellrath have collaborated with more than 70 institutions worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Tate Liverpool; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; and K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf. In 2016, they were curatorial attachés for the Sydney Biennale. They also curated the pavilions of Lebanon (2013) and the United Arab Emirates (2019) at the Venice Biennale.

Tamar Garb is Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art, University College London. She has written widely on questions of gender, sexuality, women in art history, and the body, including texts about Nancy Spero, Mona Hatoum, and Marlene Dumas. Key publications include Bodies of Modernity (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996) and The Painted Face, Portraits of Women in France 1814–1914 (New Haven/Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007). Select exhibitions she has curated include Made Routes: Vivienne Koorland and Berni Searle, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London (2019); Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, Walther Project Space, New York (2014–15); Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, Viktoria and Albert Museum, London (2011); Land Marks / Home Lands. Contemporary Art from South Africa, Haunch of Venison, London (2008).

Natasha Ginwala is Associate Curator at Large at Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Director of Colomboscope, Colombo, and co-curated the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021, with Defne Ayas). Ginwala curated the Contour Biennale 8 (Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium) and was part of the curatorial team of documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (both 2017). Other projects include Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora (2022, with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and Michelangelo Corsaro) at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town and survey exhibitions of Bani Abidi, Akinbode Akinbiyi, and Zanele Muholi at Gropius Bau. Ginwala was a member of the artistic team for the 8th Berlin Biennial (2014) and co-curated The Museum of Rhythm at the Taipei Biennial (2012) and Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź / Poland (2016–2017). Ginwala writes regularly about contemporary art and visual culture. Recent co-edited volumes include Stronger than Bone (Berlin: Archive Books; Gwangju Biennale Foundation, 2021) and Nights of the Dispossessed: Riots Unbound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).

Mona Hatoum lives and works in London and has kept a second home in Berlin since her DAAD scholarship in 2003/04. Mona Hatoum’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions worldwide, including at Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm (2022); IVAM – Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain (2021); Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis (2018); Menil Collection, Houston (2017); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2017); Centre Pompidou, Paris / Tate Modern, London / Nykytaiteen Museo Kiasma, Helsinki (2015–2016); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Contemporary Art, Doha, Qatar (2014); Beirut Art Center (2010); Rennie Museum, Vancouver (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2005). Hatoum also participated in documenta 14 and documenta 11 (2017 and 2002) and the biennials of Moscow (2013), Liverpool (2012), Istanbul (2011 and 1995), and Venice (2005 and 1995).

Polly Staple is a curator and Director of Collection, British Art at Tate, London, where she leads the development of the National Collection of British art, managing the research and acquisition of works from 1500 to the present day. She was formerly Director of Chisenhale Gallery, London, from 2008 to 2019, where she curated a program of commissions by artists such as Hito Steyerl, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Ed Atkins, Helen Marten, Camille Henrot, P. Staff, Jumana Manna, Park McArthur, Maria Eichhorn, Banu Cennetoğlu, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lydia Ourahmane, and Ima-Abasi Okon. Staple has written for, edited, and published numerous magazines, catalogues, and publications. She served as the of Frieze Projects and Editor at Large of Frieze magazine. In 2014, she was awarded the Genesis Foundation Prize, London.

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