Mona Hatoum was born to Palestinian parents living in exile in Beirut. On a visit to London in 1975, she was prevented from returning to Lebanon due to the outbreak of civil war. One of her earliest works, Measures of Distance is an uncharacteristically autobiographical piece for which she “made a conscious decision to delve into the personal”. The video work is constructed from images of her mother in the shower of the family home in Beirut. The Arabic writing overlaying these images like a curtain or veil represents her mother’s letters from Beirut to the artist in London. The soundtrack consists of an animated conversation between Hatoum and her mother overlaid with Hatoum’s voice reading an English translation of the letters. For Hatoum, as much as the work portrays the emotional intimacy of the relationship between mother and daughter, “it also speaks of exile, displacement, disorientation and a tremendous sense of loss as a result of the separation caused by war.”
