T42
A delicate teacup and saucer rendered in fine stoneware take on an unsettling quality in Mona Hatoum's *T42*, where the familiar domestic object is subtly transformed to evoke the human body. The ceramic forms suggest bones or bodily tissue, turning an everyday ritual of comfort into something visceral and disquieting. Hatoum's work challenges the safety we associate with the domestic sphere, exposing the tension between the intimate and the threatening.
- Medium
- Fine stoneware multiple in two parts (cup and saucer).
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Editions & Works on Paper
October 17, 2017
Artists in conversation
Lucio Fontana
Italian-Argentine · b. 1899
Fontana similarly transformed familiar sculptural and ceramic forms into unsettling, visceral experiences, using the medium itself to suggest bodily rupture and tension. His ceramics challenge the viewer's comfort by making the material feel alive and threatening rather than decorative.
Louise Bourgeois
French-American · b. 1911
Bourgeois consistently converted domestic and everyday objects into charged, body-referencing sculptural forms that expose the psychological violence lurking within the home. Her work shares Hatoum's precise quality of making intimate objects feel simultaneously familiar and deeply disquieting.
Ai Weiwei
Chinese · b. 1957
Ai Weiwei frequently works with ceramic traditions and everyday functional objects to embed political and conceptual provocations within culturally recognizable forms. Like T42, his ceramic works subvert the expected comfort of familiar objects to confront the viewer with deeper questions about power and vulnerability.
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