Mona Hatoum - So Much I Want To Say (1983)

Mona Hatoum's art invites us to experience anew the cultural intersections that link our identities with the physical and perceptual world surrounding us. Hatoum employs a wide variety of media and techniques, but her unique minimalist style is characterized by forms and materials that evoke feelings of intimacy and familiarity, while simultaneously suggesting the possibility (whether real or imagined) of physical danger.

In the performance Under Siege (1983), parts of which are included in the 1984 video Changing Parts, the artist struggled in vain to release herself from a container, generating an anxiety that suggests the agony of entrapment. When Mona Hatoum was 23, she came to England on a visit and stayed on when the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon prevented her returning. While the conflict was raging during the seventies and eighties, she feared for her family's safety and rarely saw them. For long periods it was impossible to phone them, or even to be sure they would receive her letters. Meanwhile she was living in London, effectively an exile. Her video, So Much I Want To Say (5 min. b/w video, Western Front Video Production, Vancouver, Canada), was made during this time. A series of still images unfolds (one every eight seconds), revealing the face of a woman (the artist) filling the screen. Two male hands repeatedly gag the woman and obscure parts of her face, sometimes covering it completely. On the sound-track, repeated over and over again, are the words "so much I want to say" spoken by a female (Hatoum's) voice.

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