LOUISE BOURGEOIS

Bourgeois’s art was inspired in part by the complex and at times traumatic events of her early childhood. The act of restaging her memories and emotions allowed her to sublimate them into universal motifs and to express contradictory emotional and psychological states: hope and fear, anxiety and calm, guilt and reparation, tension and release. Performances and sculptures that foreground sexuality, gender, and the lived body were highly acclaimed particularly within a feminist context.

Bourgeois’s art has had a profound influence on many artists and continues to be exhibited at major museums around the world. This exhibition, Bourgeois’s first in Japan in 27 years and her largest solo exhibition in the country to date, will showcase more than 100 works across three chapters that offer a comprehensive overview of her practice.

The subtitle of the exhibition, I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful. is taken from a late fabric work in which Bourgeois embroidered these words on a handkerchief. It alludes to the fluctuations and ambivalent character of her emotions, and hints at her black sense of humor. Bourgeois saw herself as a survivor. Her work expresses her strong will to live and the promise of overcoming the sometimes “hellish” suffering of mankind, which is all too often exacerbated by war, natural disaster, and disease.