Louise Bourgeois shows femininity in all its horror
One of the first things that greets you as you enter Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child at the Hayward Gallery is a sculpture made from silk clothes and cow bones.
The ghostly slips and blouses, which were Bourgeois’ own, suspended from thick, fatty bones exude an intimate discomfort – which lingers throughout the exhibition.
The Woven Child is a major retrospective that focuses exclusively on the works that Bourgeois made with fabrics and textiles during the final chapter of her long career.
These works, many of which have never been shown before in the UK, comprise one of the greatest late career chapters in the history of art.
The exhibition focuses on the mid-1990s until Bourgeois’s death in 2010 – a period during which the artist created a body of work that re-articulated many of her lifelong concerns in new ways.
These include her exploration of identity, family relationships, reparation, and memory.
Bourgeois said that the work used ‘the magic power of the needle to repair the damage’ and to offer ‘a claim to forgiveness’.
But Bourgeois’ needle has none of the comfort of cross stitch pillows or embroidered handkerchiefs.
Haberdashers’ scissors become weapons, spools of thread are restraining as well as connecting and clothes resemble straight jackets with stitched up armholes.
Fabric is the perfect medium for Bourgeois’ exploration of the disquieting side of femininity – the pain of childbirth and the cage that motherhood brings.
The centrepiece of the exhibition bringing all these threads together is Spider, a 1997 sculpture featuring a mother spider squatting over a tapestry hung cage.
Other pieces that stay with you include Pierre, a cloth head made of overlapping pink scraps depicting the artist’s brother who died in an asylum, and Single I, a dark headless figure that hangs suspended from the feet.
Each artwork has the power to grip, surprise and disquiet, brought together in an exhibition that brings you face to face with the visceral horror of life and doesn’t let go.
Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child is at the Hayward Gallery until May 15.
Tickets can be found here: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/venues/hayward-gallery?
Main Picture: Mark-Blower -Louise Bourgeois-Hayward
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