MONA HATOUM: OVER, UNDER AND IN BETWEEN

Milan,28January 2026–Fondazione Prada presents“ 

Over, underand inbetween”, a site-specific project conceived by artist Mona Hatoum for its Milan premises, from 29 January to 9 November 2026. Actively reacting to the exhibition context, Hatoum develops a three-part project, in which each segment gravitates around thought-provoking themes that reflect on the turmoil of our times and the precariousness of our existence.

The three installationscomprising this solo presentation explore three archetypal elements of Hatoum’s artistic vocabulary: the web, the map, and the grid. Their presence reactivatesthe space of the Cisterna building, which housed the silos and tanks of the formeralcoholdistillery, once located on the Fondazione Prada’s compound, by taking advantage of the height, volume, and shape of its three rooms. The three independent works embody ideas of instability, danger, and fragilitytovarying degreesof intensity and sensibility, creating a dialogue with space, and particularlythe viewer’s physical experience.

In the entrance room of the Cisterna, a large-scaleconstellation of delicate, transparent, hand-blown glass spheresthreaded through wires formsa spider’s websuspended overhead. Inthe last few decades, Hatoum has used the web motif in various materials and scales to explorethemes such as entrapment, idleness, neglect, familiar ties, and connectedness. In this case, she captures the profoundambiguity of the weband the coexistence of repulsion and fascination it evokes.

As underlined by the artist, “A web can be seen as a looming net whichsuggests oppressive entrapment, while also providing a home or a place of safety. To me, the large web overhead also has poetic, even cosmic significance. The beautiful, delicate glass spheres are an apt reference to dew drops, evoking their fragility and sparkling quality. They also resemble a celestial constellation. I personally like to see it as an allusion to the interconnectedness of all things.”The spider’s web also refers to the act of weaving, which, according to Sigmund Freud, is a feminine art that createsbeauty from the body itself.Forthis reason, it can be seen as having a further double meaning—as both asuffocating network of fear and amatrix of creation. In hertext commissioned for the publication accompanying this exhibition, American psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster describes the web as “Both a map of relation and a diagram of fear.”