Mona Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952 and has lived and worked in London since 1975. She studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London (1975-1979) and Slade School of Fine Art, London (1979-1981).
Hatoum has worked in a diverse range of media, including performance, video, photography, sculpture, installation and works on paper. Her work deals with issues of displacement, marginalisation, exclusion and systems of social and political control.
Recent solo exhibitions include a major survey organised by Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015) that toured to Tate Modern, London and KIASMA, Helsinki (2016) and a large US survey initiated by the Menil Collection, Houston (2017) that travelled to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St Louis (2018). In September 2022, Hatoum had three solo exhibitions that took place simultaneously in Berlin: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Georg Kolbe Museum and KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art.
Hatoum has also participated in international group exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), Istanbul Biennial (1995 and 2011), Documenta, Kassel (2002 and 2017), Biennale of Sydney (2006), Sharjah Biennial (2007 and 2023) and Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013).