MONA HATOUM AT FONDAZIONE PRADA MILAN

© Mona Hatoum | Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver, 2022. Kesselhaus, KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art I Ph. Jens Ziehe

Summary:

• Palestinian-British artist Mona Hatoum presents three installations at Fondazione Prada's Cisterna building through November 2026
• The works explore instability and precarity through recurring motifs: webs, maps, and grids
• Each piece interacts physically with the former distillery space and confronts visitors with fragility

Fondazione Prada in Milan hosts a new project by Mona Hatoum. The exhibition runs from January 29 through November 9, 2026, at Largo Isarco 2. Three installations occupy the Cisterna building, a structure that once housed silos and tanks for the former distillery on the property.

The show presents Hatoum's signature visual language. Webs, maps, and grids appear across the three rooms. Each work stands alone but relates to the industrial architecture of the space. The artist designed all three pieces specifically for this building.

In the entrance hall, hand-blown glass spheres hang from the ceiling. Transparent and delicate, they connect through threads to form a suspended web above visitors' heads. Hatoum has worked with web imagery for decades. The motif represents entrapment, neglect, family bonds, and connection.

The artist describes the piece as both threatening and protective. The spheres reference dewdrops. They catch light and appear fragile. The formation also resembles a celestial constellation. Hatoum sees the work as pointing to how all things connect.

The central room features a floor installation. Over thirty thousand translucent red glass spheres create a world map. Only continent outlines appear. No political or geographic borders show. The spheres rest loose on the concrete floor. Nothing fixes them in place.

Hatoum calls this setup "an open and undefined territory." External forces could destabilize the arrangement at any moment. The artist chose the Gall-Peters projection instead of the more common Mercator projection. Mercator maps have historically distorted land mass sizes, showing regions in the Global South smaller than their actual area compared to the Global North. The Gall-Peters projection corrects these distortions for Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.

Austrian architect and theorist Theo Deutinger notes that a globe differs from a map. You cannot fold or pocket a globe. A globe also prevents viewing the entire planet at once. He describes a map as Earth's skin, removed and flattened. Geographic maps embed political power dynamics. They reflect systems of dominance. Hatoum's choice of projection acknowledges this history.

The third room contains "all of a quiver," a kinetic sculpture. Nine levels of open metal cubes stack on top of each other to form a grid structure. The piece hangs from the ceiling and moves slowly. The structure oscillates between collapse and reconstruction. Each row of cubes makes creaking and clinking sounds as the grid sways and zigzags downward. The movement suggests an impending fall, like a body heading toward destruction.

The work shows Hatoum's interest in minimalist aesthetics. She transforms modular forms like cubes and grids into living structures. The piece connects to bodily experience and triggers emotional responses: discomfort, claustrophobia, helplessness. The cyclical movement represents precarity. The work suspends endlessly between opposing states: construction and destruction, levitation and collapse, resistance and fragility.

Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh writes in the exhibition publication that Hatoum's work teaches a lesson. Standing upright does not mean conquering instability. Instead, we must inhabit instability. The oscillation of "all of a quiver" demonstrates openness to change rather than control. Ghotmeh calls this humility.

The three installations activate the Cisterna's industrial past. Each piece invites physical engagement. Visitors move through spaces defined by threat and beauty, permanence and flux. The works address present conditions: political boundaries in flux, environmental precarity, social structures under pressure.

Hatoum's project strips away protective distance. The glass spheres overhead could fall. The map underfoot shifts with each step. The grid sculpture moves through its cycle of near-collapse. All three works place visitors inside states of uncertainty.

For information, contact +39 02 5666 2611 or info@fondazioneprada.org. Visit fondazioneprada.org for details.