There was something about Black. L’autre histoire de Mona Hatoum dans le Londres des années 1980

During the upheaval of the early civil war months in Lebanon in 1975, Mona Hatoum found herself in London, where she decided to study contemporary art. In the early 1980s, she graduated from the Slade School of Art, where she immersed herself in postmodern thought and the concurrent development of critical theory in the United Kingdom. Inspired by artistic movements challenging the norms of contemporary British art, she shaped her artistic approach by blending the artistic, social, and political realms. She actively engaged with the ideas of Rasheed Araeen, exploring his reflections on Third World art, postcolonialism, questions of identity, and the British Black Art movement. This article aims to examine Hatoum’s involvement in British Black Art, presenting a fresh analysis of key works that assess their critical impact through an art historical lens. While Hatoum is now a globally recognized artist, there has been limited research dedicated to the phase of her life when she existed on the fringes of art history, often being considered a migrant artist, or as she once wrote: a Black one. Drawing from an exclusive interview with the artist, this article offers an intersectional approach to both Western art history and that from the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, shedding new light on this crucial period in Hatoum’s artistic development and its broader implications for understanding diverse artistic narratives.