The interplay of material and form: Mona Hatoum:
Recollection, 1995
Artwork
In Recollection (1995), through the interplay of material and form Hatoum articulates time, space and body as an interwoven, cyclical site that is always shifting, rolling, and renewing. I came across this work during one of my regular Camberwell library visits. Dispersed across the gallery space, strands of her own hair, rolled between her fingers into delicate, gossamer-webbed spheres, collected over years in shoeboxes, gather in corners and on the windowsill (Bell, 2008). According to Bell (2008), the perfect symmetry of the sphere, a recurring form in Hatoum’s practice, is unsettled by its tendency to roll, charged with potential energy: ‘It is on the move, from a pearl of blood beading on a fingertip to the great globe that is our home’.
For me, in Recollection (1995) material and form together dictate meaning, or open the work up to meaning. Fragile threads of hair accumulate, become spheres, and in turn embody mobility, fluidity, and continuous return. The sphere is at once visceral, intimate and cosmic, linking the body’s cyclical process of shedding and shaping anew to cosmic roundedness.
In my practice, I also turn to my own hair as a material that stores memory, carrying the trace of the body and the passage of time. Yet, while Hatoum shapes hers into spheres, I form mine into springs – smaller circles within larger ones. The spring, like the sphere, is a site of potential energy, but it also functions as a storage mechanism, holding and releasing movement as an embodied archive of home. By shaping my hair into these rounded, rhythmic forms, I explore memory as cyclical, visceral and cosmic, locating home within the infinite interwoven loops of return.
Mona Hatoum, Recollection, 1995. Human hair. Dimensions variable. Installation view Beguinage St. Elisabeth, Kortrijk. Photo: Fotostudio Eshof, Courtesy of the Artist.
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