Hair Necklace (wood) | Harvard Art Museums

Gallery Text

Hatoum, a Palestinian born in Beirut, uses everyday objects and personal artifacts to examine the effects of exile and alienation. For this work she collected strands of her own hair and painstakingly formed them into delicate round beads, threading them and placing them on an exquisitely carved wooden display bust. Inserted into the aestheticized space of a gallery, the hair beads — elegant and repulsive — address the disparities between the private and the public body. Hatoum grounds her work in the materiality of the body to convey a sense of the dislocation resulting from forced immigration. Born to exiled parents, she experienced disequilibrium a second time, in 1975, when the civil war in Lebanon compelled her to remain in England. With works such as Hair Necklace, Hatoum uses the most personal of materials — shed from her own body — to evoke the fragments of self one reclaims and values during such experiences of exile.

Identification and Creation

Object Number: 2013.16
People: Mona Hatoum, Palestinian (Beirut, Lebanon born 1952)
Title: Hair Necklace (wood)
Classification: Sculpture
Work Type: sculpture
Date: 2013
Culture: Palestinian
Persistent Link: https://hvrd.art/o/348038

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Human hair and wooden bust

Dimensions

bust: 28.6 x 21 x 17.8 cm (11 1/4 x 8 1/4 x 7 in.)
necklace: 19 cm (7 1/2 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

inscription: On bottom of bust, in graphite: 2/3

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History: Mona Hatoum, created 2013; [Alexander and Bonin, New York], sold; to the Harvard Art Museums, 2013.

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Edition: 2/3

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mr. G. David Thompson, in memory of his son, G. David Thompson, Jr., Class of 1958, by exchange
Accession Year: 2013
Object Number: 2013.16
Division: Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact: am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
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Publication History

Hair Necklace, Very Vary Veri, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 2017), No. 3, p. 31, ill. (b/w)

Exhibition History

32Q: 1120 Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 08/10/2017
32Q: 3620 University Study Gallery, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 08/31/2019 - 01/08/2020
Seeing in Art and Medicine, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 09/02/2023 - 12/30/2023

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu

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2013.16: Hair Necklace (wood)