Marrow
- Artist: Mona Hatoum
- Date: 1996
- Medium: Rubber
- Dimensions: object: 1285 × 585 × 510 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Marrow” by Mona Hatoum. The piece looks like an orange rubber infant cot, but it’s slumped flat on the floor, almost like a collapsed body. The title hints at bone marrow, the soft tissue inside bones that keeps us alive and growing, so the work feels like a reminder of vulnerability and resilience.
Hatoum turned everyday furniture into something unsettling. “I see furniture as being very much about the body… I made a series of furniture pieces which are more hostile than comforting.” This sculpture comes from that same series, along with works like “Silence,” a glass crib that could shatter, and “Incommunicado,” a bare metal cot with razor‑thin wires that feel more danger than comfort.
By turning a comforting object into a strange, almost threatening shape, Hatoum forces us to look at how even the safest parts of our lives can hide tension and uncertainty.
See it in person
Marrow is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
