Mona Hatoum was born into a Palestinian family in Beirut in 1952. While on a short visit to London in 1975 the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War prevented her from returning home and she has lived in London ever since.

She has held solo exhibitions in numerous museums in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. She has also participated in many important exhibitions including the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), Documenta, Kassel (2002 and 2017), Biennale of Sydney (2006), Istanbul Biennial (1995 and 2011) and Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2013).

Recent solo exhibitions include a major survey organised by Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015) that toured to Tate Modern, London and KIASMA, Helsinki (2016). Another survey was initiated by the Menil Collection, Houston (2017) and travelled to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St Louis (2018).

Hatoum was awarded the Joan Miró Prize (2011), the 10th Hiroshima Art Prize by the city of Hiroshima (2017) and most recently the Praemium Imperiale by the Japan Art Foundation for her lifetime achievements in the category of sculpture (2019). She is the current recipient of the 2020 edition of the Julio González Prize awarded since 2000 by the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) where her monographic exhibition is currently on view until September 12, 2021.