Mona Hatoum: Over, under and in between

Fondazione Prada will present “Over, under and in between”, a site-specific project conceived by artist Mona Hatoum for its Milan premises, from 29 January to 9 November 2026 (Press Preview on Wednesday 28 January). 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 installations comprising this solo presentation explore three archetypal elements of Hatoum’s artistic vocabulary: the web, the map, and the grid. Their presence reactivates the space of the Cisterna building, which housed the silos and tanks of the former alcohol distillery, 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 fragility to varying degrees of intensity and sensibility, creating a dialogue with space, and particularly the viewer’s physical experience.

In the entrance room of the Cisterna, a large-scale constellation of delicate, transparent, hand-blown glass spheres threaded through wires forms a spider’s web suspended overhead. In the last few decades, Hatoum has used the web motif in various materials and scales to explore themes such as entrapment, idleness, neglect, familiar ties, and connectedness. In this case, she captures the profound ambiguity of the web and the coexistence of repulsion and fascination it evokes.

The concrete floor in the central room of the Cisterna is covered with large areas of translucent red glass balls arranged in the shape of a world map. Political and geographical borders have been intentionally ignored here, with only the continents delineated. More than thirty thousand glass balls, which are not fixed to the floor and can be identified as separate entities, form an unstable configuration that the artist describes as “a loose and undefined territory,” which is potentially susceptible to destabilising external forces.

A towering, kinetic installation entitled all of a quiver responds to the monumental height of the third room of the Cisterna. Consisting of nine levels of open, stacked cubes, the gridded metallic structure mimics scaffolding or the skeleton of a building with its rigid geometry. Resting on the floor and animated by a motorised mechanism, the installation slowly oscillates between downward collapse and re-erection. Sounds of creaking and clanking accompany each row of cubes as the structure sways and zigzags down as if slumping—almost like a body—towards destruction. Once it reaches a certain level, it suddenly begins to sway back upright and then “quiver” right before reaching stillness and resuming its height of 8.6 meters.

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication in the Quaderni series of Fondazione Prada. It features three texts by renowned scholars and theorists, Theo Deutinger, Lina Ghotmeh, and Jamieson Webster, that explore Mona Hatoum’s exhibited works from a variety of perspectives, ranging from psychology to geography and architecture.