PRESENTER:

Take a moment to look at these pieces by Mona Hatoum—if you’re seeing them for the first time, what do they make you think of? We invited ten-year-old Jane Wu and her parents to M+ and asked them exactly that.

JANE WU:

There are invisible birds that fell on the floor, bleeding; only the blood is left as the birds are invisible. Why is there blood? Because they died; the dead birds turn into blood; so, the birds are in the blood. I can’t see the dead birds. Yeah, I think these are bird cages, without a way out.

MRS WU:

I think they look like crooked high-rise buildings, and there’s something red in them. They didn’t make me think of Slime, but I do feel uneasy when I see them, probably because of the red colour. And that red seems to be struggling to escape, or fall out of the gaps.

MR WU:

My first impression is that they’re the same height as us. And it echoes our current circumstances with the distancing between people; the 1.5 metre distancing. However, Jane’s idea made me think, I do think there could be birds flying in the cages, crashing into the sides. And I think it’s more than one, there are five birds trapped in the cages.

PRESENTER:

We asked Jane if she was one of the caged birds, how she would feel?

JANE WU:

Well, the bird is miserable as it is being kept in a cage with no door.

PRESENTER:

Although the Wu family didn’t know anything about this work beforehand, their observation of the piece through its contrasting forms, colours and textures shows us how we can personally invest an artwork with our own sense of meaning.

Hatoum believes any piece of art—including her own—has many layers. These layers mean that people will interpret the piece in very different ways, their imaginations and emotions firing off without any offered explanation from the artist. So, take another look—what do you see?

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