All seems to have gone quiet on the Palestinian front. So much worry is now invested in Iran, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, there’s almost no news from one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. Part of the problem might be that there aren’t enough Palestinian artists making headlines these days.
Mona Hatoum’s Remains to be Seen is exceptional for generating a lot more publicity than artists from the region ever get — even before her show opened. Having had a successful exhibition at Tate Modern in 2016, the West has been keen to hear more from a representative of the best-known ex-nation of the moment — Palestine. Even better, she has, for decades, been a resident of London, capital of various Diasporas.
Hatoum was in London long before those far-off “Cool Britannia” days of Tony Blair. What a distant memory that time seems now in the age of prorogation. If an image comes to mind of the coolest locations of that comparatively golden age, it’s likely to be White Cube art gallery. This was the benchmark for galleries around the world when they realised that luxury was the last thing art collectors wanted when they were in search of the edgy.
White Cube influenced all corners of the world, and perhaps even White Box in Publika owes a debt to Jay Jopling, a master of contemporary-art marketing to rival the world’s number one — the American go-getter supreme, Larry Gagosian.
Just as London has mostly become so gentrified (it’s hard to find neighbourhoods that are still street cred), White Cube has branched out to Bermondsey. This is where Haltom’s work finds itself. Far from the sophistication of the Levant, it’s a neighbourhood that once housed Southeast Londoners who worked at the biggest fish market in town.
HATOUM’S CANVAS
Now it’s home to an exhibition by one of the risen stars of the modern Middle East. Not surprisingly, her niche is exile and dislocation. The medium has ranged between video installations and wire-mesh lockers with motorised lightbulbs.
In the major new installation, her work continues the references to the world she observes today: confinement, surveillance, mobility and conflict. Creating a message out of a wide range of materials, including steel, brick, concrete, rubble, glass and human hair, she explores the elemental forms of the grid and the sphere.
With the artist’s magic touch, she turns heavy, industrial building materials into a light, suspended cube. Another work, Orbital (2018), employs similar materials resonant of war and destruction, in the form of a globe with additions that make it reminiscent of a series of planets rotating in orbit.
Everyday building materials are also used in A Pile of Bricks (2019) which, as indicated, comprises a stack of bricks on trolley. The impression created is of a mobile architectural model, whose many holes represent the windows of a large building. Partially carved away and indented, it impresses with a state of tension, halfway between organised symmetry and the onset of destruction.
FAR FROM SWEET
There are many other references to grids in Hatoum’s exhibition, evident in works such as Hair Mesh (2013), a billowing curtain of woven grids of hair, and Cells (2014), a stack of metal lockers. Glass also features in a new large-scale suspended installation, a mobile of the world map, whose continents are cut from delicate sheet-glass and hung from the ceiling by metal rods. It conveys the impression of a world dismembered — a classic interpretation by an artist whose vision has been gathering momentum for years.
There’s a new and expanded version of Hatoum’s essential installation Quarters, first shown in 1996. Reduced, hard-edged and minimal in its sculptural language, an array of steel bunks, each with five individual “beds”, it’s restrictive and claustrophobic.
The disquiet continues with the installation titled Remains of the Day (2016-18). Distinct domestic settings include a kitchen and play area with children’s chairs, toys and a cot. Burnt and charred, the whole ensemble appears like shadows of the solid objects they once were. Representing the home, it’s far from sweet.
To gather support for the Palestinian cause, perhaps the exhibition should go on a world tour. How would it fare in Malaysia? It has done well in Southeast London so why not Southeast Asia?
Politically, Mona would get a lot of support, but how ready are local art buyers for this installation view of world issues? Perhaps they’re not quite on board with the human hair but at least Malaysia already has spaces that look remarkably like the different versions of White Cube.
What: Remains of the Day
Where: White Cube Bermondsey, 144 – 152, Bermondsey St, Bermondsey, London SE1 3TQ
When: Ends Nov 3, 2019