Published in conjunction with the exhibition Mona Hatoum: Terra infirma organized by The Menil Collection, Houston, October 13, 2017-February 28, 2018.

Mona Hatoum is recognized as one of the most significant figures in contemporary art. Her work addresses political conflict, the physical body, and feminist issues in a surrealistic style and with a minimalist aesthetic. This thought-provoking artist uses diverse methods and works in various media, including installation, video, sculpture, and performance art. This four-color catalog of her current exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams was edited by Laura Heon, MASS MoCA's Curator, and gracefully illuminates in words and pictures the Hatoum exhibition, which was at SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico before coming to Massachusetts. The works in DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE revolve around Hatoum's continuing fascination with the everyday object, which she turns into something uncanny and often threatening. Kitchen utensils crackle with an audible, amplified electrical current in Sous Tension. The Baalbek Birdcage, a beautiful Victorian birdcage enlarged to the exact size of a prison cell at Alcatraz, represents the near-universal, feminine dread of a confining domestic life. La Grand Broyeuse (Mouli-Julienne x17) is an 18-foot-tall reproduction of an early, hand-operated "food processor," which the viewer quickly realizes could injure a human being. Also included, in sharp contrast, is a series of delicate rubbings on Japanese wax paper - faint, ghostly impressions, white on a white sheet - that Hatoum created during a residency at the Shaker community in Sabbath Day Lake, Maine, using beautiful handmade Shaker colanders and graters from the 1880s.

Mona Hatoum works in a diverse and unconventional range of media, including installation, sculpture, video and photography, with her artistic practice discussed almost exclusively in sociopolitical terms. This richly illustrated monograph - which includes a number of full-page illustrations - explores Hatoum's unique visual aesthetic and brings other influences to the surface, notably Surrealism (the first Western art Hatoum discovered as a young girl) and Minimalism (the dominant aesthetic she encountered in art school in London). In exploring these seemingly contradictory impulses, this volume uncovers artistic and personal concerns that go beyond a simple journalistic reading of Hatoum's artistic practice.

In Mona Hatoum's breathtaking works, conflict arises from the juxtaposition of opposites--beauty and horror, desire and revulsion. Born in Beirut in 1952 to a Palestinian family, Hatoum is concerned with confrontational themes such as violence, oppression, and voyeurism, often in reference to the human body. Published to accompany a major retrospective, Mona Hatoum features the artist's major works, including well-known pieces such as Corps tranger, 1994, an endoscopic journey through the artist's body; Hot Spot, a large, cage-like globe with world contours outlined in neon; and Present Tense, which deals with the idea of shifting territories. Beautifully designed, with 250 color images, this book will prove a must for all of those interested in contemporary art, especially video art and installation.

This exhibition represents one of many possible takes on women and the Post-Minimalist legacy. Its conception and realization greatly depend on the efforts of numerous artists who, over the last twenty-five years, have forged significant changes within the art world.