Mona Hatoum’s Routes II is comprised of five color photocopies of maps taken from airline brochures depicting flight routes. The maps detail networks created by travel, charting the globe primarily according to movement rather than geographic, national, or political boundaries. Using ink and gouache, Hatoum drew colored lines onto the maps, adding her own hand-drawn abstract designs to the existing webs of the airlines’ routes.
Hatoum was born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents. In 1975, she was on a trip to London when the Lebanese Civil War broke out, preventing her from returning. She decided to stay on, and still lives and works there today. “The nomadic existence suits me fine,” she says, “because I do not expect myself to identify completely with any one place.” She has said that she considers the paths she drew in Routes II to be “routes for the rootless.”
