This is an early work of Hatoum’s, which resonates with my practice on several layers. The body here is used as aesthetics not abject, which it may first seem, but as a corporal physicality of an action. Hatoum being a British and Palestinian woman works between the Western and Palestinian cultures thus giving a juxtaposition between the two origins. Danto, (p.139) discusses aesthetics “I know those aesthetics became politicized in art criticism by the mid-eighties. Conservative art critics insisted on stressing aesthetics as what those they perceived as left-wing critics neglected or overlooked.” Hatoum in her performance is acting out the female gender of aesthetics, yet on the other hand, being a Palestinian person and English politicize the work.his image can be viewed as the body being protected insulated from the exterior world, or as imprisonment is self-imposed, yet self-expression through the murky water and the touch of the glass walls, this is my world and you can view but you can not enter or ask me any questions. I relate this to my own world, of the sensory inner thoughts I harbor. Viewing Hatoum one can take on any illusion of thoughts, I immediately am drawn to the performance of Ana Mendieta in her Silueta series where her body where just a few photos as an archive were made. Like Hatoum here, this is a very personal action.
Danto , AC 2013, What Art Is, Yale University Press, New Haven, viewed 21 August 2020.