Mona HatoumDomestic Disturbance

Mona Hatoum’s complicated relationship to the domestic is played out with reserved drama in Domestic Disturbance, an exhibition of 15 new works shown at MASS MoCA. The sculptures, installation, and video were made during a residency at the Creux de l’enfer, an exhibition space in an old knife factory in Thiers, France. The fact that these works were made in and for a former industrial space built in the 19th century made MASS MoCA — itself a former 19th-century factory complex — a uniquely apt American venue for the works.

This exhibition, organized by MASS MoCA with SITE Santa Fe, was the most comprehensive and extensive presentation of a single theme in Hatoum’s work to date.

The focus of the Hatoum exhibition was a threatening, yet darkly comical kitchen implement: La Grande Broyeuse (Mouli-Julienne x17), 1999. Hatoum based this massive black steelwork on an old slicer, a hand-cranked precursor to the modern food processor, that she found in her mother’s cupboard in Lebanon. La Grande Broyeuse‘s spindly legs and tail-like crank give it the appearance of a gigantic creature, its scale — sized for humans — is ominous indeed. For Hatoum, the instrument represents the domestic sphere, a sphere she presented at a confusing scale and full of potential violence.

No Way III, 1996