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Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time
February 12 – April 3, 2005
Considered one of the most revered artists of our time, Louise Bourgeois’s career has spanned the better part of the last century. Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time includes an extraordinary group of life-size busts in sewn fabric, cell-like vitrines housing surrealistic scenes, and totemic figures, reinterpreting in fabric, Bourgeois’s wood and bronze sculptures of the 1940s and 1950s. Over 20 pieces, most created in the last four years, are accompanied by a selection of the artist’s graphic work.
Born in 1911, Bourgeois was one of the first artists to assert the importance of autobiography and identity as subjects for contemporary artists. Her family background and childhood in the suburbs of Paris and the traumatic relationship between her father, mother and governess influenced her work throughout her career.
In the 1980s Bourgeois began making a series of theatrical spaces called Cells, representing different types of pain – “the physical, the emotional and the psychological, and the mental and intellectual.” The Cells are self-contained or partial enclosures, which can be experienced by entering the spaces, or by peering through mesh walls, door or windows.
Some of the most arresting of Bourgeois’s recent works are a series of extraordinary fabric heads. Sewn with a crudeness that belies their structural sophistication, they are uncannily lifelike. Open mouths appear moist from exhalation and eyes focus directly on the viewer or seem to deliberately glance away.
Now in her 94th year, Louise Bourgeois has always been a leader in artistic innovation. Her first exhibition of sculpture took place in New York in 1949, and at the age of 71, Bourgeois was the first woman artist to be given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time is organized by the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. It is curated by Frances Morris, senior curator, Tate Modern, and is co-curated with Brenda McParland, head of exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. MOCA, North Miami is the only U.S. venue for the exhibition.
The presentation of Louise Bourgeois: Stitches in Time at MOCA, is sponsored by Northern Trust, Gillette, Monica and Jorge Tchinnosian, Nancy and Michael Gifford, Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, the Lewis E. Nerman Philanthropic Fund of Greater Kansas City, and the Samuel I. Adler Family Foundation. Media Sponsorship by The Miami Herald. Forward >>
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