Mona Hatoum
Web, 2025, Hand-blown clear glass spheres, stainless-steel cable, Dimensions variable, SK·PODO Museum Collection
Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a Palestinian family. In 1975, while she was visiting London, the Lebanese Civil War broke out, preventing her from returning home. She has since lived and worked in London. The experience of suddenly finding a familiar place inaccessible has deeply informed her exploration of home and the body, boundaries and power. Hatoum transforms familiar objects and structures into unsettling situations, revealing the tension and threat that can lie beneath ideas of safety and protection.
Web stretches across Gyeongheung-gak like an enormous spider’s web. Transparent glass spheres suspended from stainless steel cables catch the light and shimmer delicately, yet this beauty contains opposing qualities. A spider’s web is both a home that offers shelter and protection and a device used to capture prey. Within the repeated act of spinning fine strands into a space of its own, protection and survival coexist with refuge and entrapment.
Filling Gyeongheung-gak, Web holds these opposing forces in a state of taut tension. A single strand may appear delicate, yet as the strands connect, they form a structure that is not easily undone. Walking beneath it, visitors encounter the subtle tension between being sheltered and being caught. Hatoum reminds us that the spaces and relationships we trust to protect us can take on very different meanings, prompting us to reconsider the conditions of protection and survival in an unstable world.
