An
artist whose form of work is even harder to classify than most: "
installation" doesn't even get close. A
Palestinian now resident in Britain, she is popular without being
outrageous in the way that
Tracey Emin and
Damien Hirst are, though her work is quite as un-traditional.
At the Tate Modern now there is a video of her mother showering, and talking with her; at least I think that's what it is: I couldn't quite get through the press for a good view.
At a Turner Prize shortlisting several years ago she had two works in. One was a big arrangement of small cages, their doors partly open, and a bare light bulb on a long flex hanging down and swinging, giving constantly changing shadow views of the high-rise of cages against the walls. A distinctly hypnotic effect.
But her real showpiece then was a journey of discovery with... now I can't even remember the proper name for the device, an endoscope, a laparoscope? A thin catheter for inserting inside the body. Which she did. A film loop of perhaps five minutes' duration of her own throat down into her stomach, then out again, over the belly, into her vagina, out, around, and up her rectum for quite some distance, quite a few turns. And utterly fascinating. First, how many of us could say we know this is what the inside of our body looks like? And second, it worked as a work of art: it was beautiful.