Waiting is Forbidden

2006

Mona Hatoum’s blue enamel sign reads “Waiting is forbidden” in English, though the Arabic may be more accurately translated as “No stopping and no loitering.” An ominous warning rather than a precise directive, the phrase evokes the surveillance of public spaces as well as the sense of dislocation experienced by refugees. Hatoum was displaced beginning in 1975, when she found herself stranded in London after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. Since then, her work has questioned the meaning and modes of home, migration, and displacement.