Hatoum went through her art training in schools in London in the mid-1970s. She has worked in a diverse range of media including performance, video, photography, sculpture, installation and works on paper. Her work, which deals with issues of displacement, marginalisation and systems of social and political control, is often realised through the use of unconventional materials such as household objects, glass marbles or even her own hair.

In the 1980s, Hatoum explored themes of surveillance and state control through performance and video works that focused intensely on using the body as a site of conflict.

Since the early 1990s, her work developed into large installations and sculptures exploring notions of exclusion and restriction of movement through materials and structures that bring up in the viewer opposing emotions of desire and repulsion, fear and fascination.

In 2020, Mona Hatoum was awarded the Julio González Prize 2020 by the Valencia Institute of Modern Art, as well as the Praemium Imperiale prize for Sculpture in 2019, submitted by Japan Art Association, the most historical cultural foundation in Japan.

She was presented with a number of additional prizes during her career, such as the Hiroshima Art Prize by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2017), the Joan Miró Prize of the Fundació Joan Miró (2011), and the Roswitha Haftmann Stiftung Prize, Zurich (2004) among others.

In 2015, her important exhibition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris travelled to Tate Modern, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki (2016).

Mona Hatoum has shown her work at numerous major institutions such as the Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin (2022); KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2022); NBK - Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2022); Magasin III and Accelerator, Stockholm (2022); Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), Valencia (2021); Menil Collection, Houston, (2017) that toured to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis (2018); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (2017); Fundación PROA, Buenos Aires (2015); Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo (2014); Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent (2014); Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2014); Arter, Istanbul (2012); Fundació Juan Miró, Barcelona (2012); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2009); Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2005); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2004); Kunstmuseum, Bonn (2004); Magasin III, Stockholm (2004); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Oaxaca (2003); Centro de Arte, Salamanca (2002).

Important group exhibitions also include the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2023); Queensland Art Gallery, South Brisbane (2022) ; BY ART MATTERS, Hangzhou (2022) ; Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna e contemporanea, Rome (2022) ; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2022) ; John Hansard Gallery in Southampton (2022) ; ICA Boston (2022) ; Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt (2022); CAPC Bordeaux (2021); Marta Herford Museum for Art, Architecture, Design (2020); Boghossian Foundation, Villa Empain, Brussels (2020); MoMA PS1, New York (2019); National Gallery, Singapor (2019); Fridericianum, Kassel (2017); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (2016); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015); Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2015); Gwangju Museum of Art (2014); Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2013); Museo Guggenheim Bilbao (2012); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); Museo Madre, Naples (2009); Tate Modern, London (2006); Venice Biennale (2005); Documenta 11 (2002).

Mona Hatoum’s works have joined the collections of the HE Art Museum, Shunde; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hiroshima Museum of Art; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; LaM, Villeneuve d’Ascq; MAC VAL, Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine; Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris; Sammlung Goetz, Munich; La Caixa, Barcelona; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich; Mathaf, Doha; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah.