Measures of Distance (1988)
By Mona Hatoum
This early piece of Mona Hatoum is jarring. The raw directness of the relationship between a mother and daughter is almost too much to handle. The video starts with close-up images of what appears to be body parts, behind a translucent drop, covered with Arabic script. Visually, these images are threatening to a Western observer viewing this video after 9/11. Arabic is associated with terror, the Other, the unknown. The juxtaposition of the intimacy of another person's body and the ominous nature of the script is puzzling. The combination is further complicated by the image of the female voice and body with Arabic. In our common perception, women of Islam, women associated with Arabic are behind veils, they do not speak out and nor show their body, they are not self-expressive yet the viewer is en face with a very intimate portrait of a woman. At the beginning of the video, there are two women talking in the background in what appears to be Arabic while the viewer is confronted with the images of the body and the script. A woman's voice takes over, reading letters. The letters are from Mona Hatoum's mother to Mona and the age of the voice identifies the reader as the artist hers…
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