Mona Hatoum’s installation Fix It uses old, rusty factory fixtures and furnishings: cauldrons and other containers, shelf units, workers’ lockers, funnels, tin cans, buckets, and more. The majority of these items was found on the premises of the old Fix brewery, an industrial building that housed the EMST—National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, from 2000 until 2003, and was renovated in order to form the permanent home of EMST in 2014.

Hatoum visited Athens and the old Fix beer factory several times in order to choose and “rescue” the pieces that she used for the installation.

This is an electrical installation where it seems like something is going dreadfully wrong and is about to self-destruct, but, despite its random appearance, the cycle of dying lights picks up again and again and repeats. The overall impression is that of an urban or industrial cityscape in a clear state of decay with two possible but contradictory readings: an environment in the last throes of death or one in the process of regeneration being brought back to life.