Response on a video: Mona Hatoum, Measures of Distance

Mona Hatoum, Measures of Distance
[Name]
[Institution]
[Date]
Mona Hatoum, Measures of Distance
‘Measures of distance' is a video that narrates Hatoum's (the artist) life, and the way she longed to be together with her family after being in exile for a while. Much of her desire was to be close to her mother. The video starts with Arabic script moving across the screen while at the same time; there is an image of a woman at the background, which represents images of Hatoum's mother. The Arabic script acts as a partitioning between the woman and the viewer. It acts in the same way as the veil that protects Muslim women's privacy.
Although the main thing addressed in this video is a close and emotional relationship existing between mother and daughter, it also speaks of displacement, disorientation, exile, and tremendous sense of loss caused by the ongoing war in the artist's country. In this work, the artist tries to go against some of fixed ideologies about the Muslim woman. Muslim women are normally perceived to lack the right of expressing their feelings and thoughts. The video is constructed in such a way that every frame displays literal closeness and implied distance.
This video unfolds Hatoum's status and it is told from first person point of view. This is because the person...