In Hatoum's work, carpets refer at once to Minimalist floor sculptures, Muslim prayer rugs, and commonplace domestic furnishings. Rubber Mat combines these associations with another of the artist's foremost preoccupations: the human body. With its pattern of intestines, this work turns the body inside out, bringing its deepest recesses to the surface. While the work's supple surface is appealing, Hatoum notes that Rubber Mat also "looks like entrails splayed out all over the floor, as if it's the aftermath of a massacre. There’s a kind of attraction/repulsion operating here."

Gallery label from

Mind and Matter: Alternative Abstractions, 1940s to Now, May 5–August 16, 2010.

Medium Multiple of rubber silicone
Dimensions overall: 1 × 31 5/16 × 23 7/16" (2.5 × 79.5 × 59.5 cm)
Publisher Alexander and Bonin Publishing, Inc., New Yorkfor, Printed Matter, New York, andNew Museum
Fabricator Gheorge Adam, Red Hill, PA
Edition 35
Credit Purchased with proceeds from the 1998 "Clue" event, sponsored by the Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Object number 45.1999
Department Drawings and Prints

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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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