One of Mona Hatoum’s best-known works, Measures of Distance is composed of still images of the artist’s mother in the shower, covered by the Arabic text (read aloud in English) of her letters to her daughter. Hatoum has said this work “spoke of the complexities of exile, displacement, the sense of loss and separation caused by war. In other words, it contextualized the image, or this person, ‘my mother,’ within a social-political context.” The layered elements of image, text, and voiceover also create a dual narrative of an emotional relationship between mother and daughter and their experiences of exile. Hatoum was born in Beirut to a Palestinian family, following their displacement from Haifa in the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. In 1975, Hatoum found herself stranded in London for several years due to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, and was unable to return to her family, as revealed in this video.
