This work is a large-scale re-creation of the kinetic sculpture Self-Erasing Drawing Hatoum made in 1979. Replacing conventional artists’ tools (pencil and paper, paint and canvas) with a motorized, toothed metal arm and a circular bed of sand, Hatoum mechanizes the practices of mark-making and erasure. At a rate of five rotations per minute, the sculpture's hypnotic and continual grooving and smoothing of sand evokes polarities of building and destroying, existence and disappearance, displacement and migration.

Gallery label from

Out of Time: A Contemporary View, August 30, 2006–April 9, 2007.

Medium Sand, steel, aluminum, and electric motor
Dimensions 10 5/8" (27 cm) high x 13' 1 ½" (400.1 cm) diameter
Credit Gift of Jerry Speyer and Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds
Object number 971.2005
Department Painting & Sculpture

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Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum

British of Palestinian origin, born in Beirut, Lebanon 1952 28 works online

Born to a Palestinian family in Beirut in 1952, Hatoum moved to London in 1975, shortly before war broke out in Lebanon.

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