concept:era contemporary
Corps etranger (Foreign Body)
Video installation by Mona Hatoum (1994). A cylindrical wooden structure houses two video projectors displaying endoscopic footage of the interior of the artist's body, accompanied by amplified heartbeat and breath sounds. Visitors enter the cylinder and stand on the projected body-imagery. Held by Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Scholarly Significance
Palestinian diaspora art anchor: Corps etranger at Centre Pompidou.
Notes
- ·The title 'corps etranger' is a French medical term for a foreign body lodged inside a human body.
- ·The endoscopic footage was produced in collaboration with medical doctors.
- ·The visitor who enters the cylinder stands on projected imagery of the body interior.
- ·One of the most widely discussed feminist and postcolonial art works of the 1990s.