The curatorial character of the course at the Slade School of Fine Art where Mona Hatoum studied in London no doubt motivated the artist to turn towards alternative artistic practices, such as performance. During the 1980s she thus produced a series of performances with strongly political content. In 1985, the Brixton Art Gallery invited ten contemporary artists to create performances in the streets of Brixton, a working-class neighbourhood in the suburbs of London. The photographs taken during these actions then formed an exhibition at the gallery. As part of this commissioned work, Mona Hatoum presented two performances entitled Roadworks. By integrating her work into public space, the artist’s intention was to create a link between the artists and a very different audience than that of the museums and galleries. In the first video, the artist walks barefoot through the city streets, dragging behind her a pair of Doc Martens boots with its laces tied to her ankles. Her bare feet on the tarmac of the city seem vulnerable and ill-adapted, compared to the heaviness of the boots, traditionally worn by a very wide social spectrum: workers, policemen, skinheads, and the punk movement of the late 1970s. In the second performance, produced in collaboration with Stefan Szczelkun, the two artists push one another, with their mouths covered in adhesive tape, dressed in black jumpsuits with bare feet. One of the pair falls and the other draws the silhouette of the body on the ground, as though marking out a crime scene. The roles are then reversed, the one who was pushed becomes the one who pushes and draws the silhouette of the other’s body on the ground. The process of anonymous violence continues in an infinite loop, until the marks on the ground form a streak on the pavement. Through seemingly very simple actions, the artist makes a description of the social mix in the neighbourhood and the violence that she sometimes witnesses.

 Priscilia Marques