The Kunst Museum Winterthur presents Routes of Dissonance, a major solo exhibition by Mona Hatoum, featuring sculptures and installations that transform everyday objects into unsettling reflections on conflict, displacement, and vulnerability.

The title of the exhibition subtly reflects the turbulence of our times and the various ways of dealing with these upheavals. At the same time, it refers to the layout of the exhibition hall in Winterthur, which, unlike museums with a classical hierarchical structure, allows visitors to take different routes to view and discover Mona Hatoum’s art.

The body as a site of social and political conflict forms the basis of Mona Hatoum’s artistic practice. Born in 1952 to a Palestinian family in Beirut, she found herself stranded in London in 1975 when the Lebanese Civil War broke out, preventing her from returning home. This firsthand experience of being an outsider was translated into her unsettling performances of the 1980s. Since the early 1990s, she has created sculptures and installations in which the absent body, like the private home, serves as a metaphor for threat and vulnerability. Austere forms contrast with fragile materials, and everyday objects appear comfortable yet reveal latent danger. ‘I like to use furniture in my work because it is about everyday life. If these objects are either unstable or threatening, they become a reference to our fragility.’—Hatoum.

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