Born in 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon.
Lives and works in London.


Born to a Palestinian family, Mona Hatoum studied in London in the mid-1970s. Her political beliefs are poetically realised through installations, sculptures, video, photographs and works on paper, employing a variety of often unconventional mediums, such as hair, marbles, maps and household items.
In the 1980s, Hatoum explored state oppression and surveillance through performance and video, often focusing intensely on the body.
From the early 1990s, her work developed into large installations and sculptures exploring notions of displacement and global conflict involving opposing emotions of desire and repulsion, fear and fascination.

In 2019, Mona Hatoum has been awarded the Praemium Imperiale prize for Sculpture, submitted by Japan Art Association, the most historical cultural foundation in Japan. 
She was presented with a number of other 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), Honorary Doctorate from the University of Southampton (2010), or the Roswitha Haftmann Stiftung Prize, Zurich (2004) among others.

In 2015, the important exhibition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris travelled to Tate Modern, London, then to the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki (2016).
Mona Hatoum has exhibited at numerous major institutions such as the Menil Collection, Houston, (2017) with an exhibition 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); Kunstmuseum St-Gallen (2013); 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 de Oaxaca (2003); Centro de Arte de Salamanca (2002).

Important group exhibitions also include the 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 Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Hiroshima Museum of Art, Japan; Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; LaM, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France; MAC VAL, Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France; Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland; Mathaf, Doha, Qatar; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE.