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EN
| Mona Hatoum Corps étranger 1994 Le Centre Pompidou Paris, France |
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Rights (Photo / Work):
© Paris, Musée National d´Art Moderne © Bildrecht, Wien, 2014 List of sources: |
For this work the artist used endoscopic technology for showing her body's interior and exterior. The pictures created in this way were projected on the floor, in a small cylindrical structure and accompanied by heart murmurs and breath sounds. Due to the narrowness of the room the visitors feel troubled of being confronted in a very direct and penetrating way with the look into a foreign body. The artist objectifies and fragments the body, at the same time she reveals the most private parts of herself, such as her vagina, for example. One could argue that the videoinstallation reverses the objectifying male gaze[1], turning the inside out. Like in a "Vagina dentata" – a toothed vagina, the viewers are drawn into the body[2] instead of just looking at him.[3] Hatoum, however, shows very few scenes where the presented body could be identified as clearly female or clearly male.[4] Hatoum also intended to demonstrate how the medical technologies are able to dissolve identities and emphasizes the importance of getting aware of our individuality.
Biography: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Hatoum (Translation: K. Seifter) |
