Annette Messager
°1943, Berck-Sur-Mer (FR) – lives and works in Malakof (FR)
Annette Messager embarked on her artistic career amid the tumultuous climate surrounding the May 1968 student uprisings in Paris. It was in this atmosphere of radicalism that she discovered that art could be found in the streets and in the tasks of everyday life, rather than solely within the cloistered realm of the museum. Some of her early pieces—such as Boarders at Rest (1971–72), in which she clothed dozens of embalmed sparrows in tiny hand-knit sweaters, and My Collection of Proverbs (1974), a selection of mostly misogynistic phrases about women hastily embroidered on unhemmed squares of cloth—use modest materials and techniques commonly associated with domesticity and often devalued as “women’s work.” Her nostalgia-laden gestures belie the subversive messages of social concern in her art, in which the conflict between nature and civilization and the lack of sexual equality in society are recurrent themes.
(courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum)
Annette Messager – Voeux triangle (tentation), 1989
Annette Messager – Truqueuse, La femme-homme, 1975
Annette Messager – En même temps (At the same Time), 2021
Annette Messager – The Pikes, 1992–3
Annette Messager – Mes vœux, 1988
Annette Messager – Les spectres des couturières, 2014-2015
Annette Messager – série Les pensionnaires, 1971-1972
Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, at venues such as MOCA, Sydney; K21, Dusseldorf; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Monterrey; MoMA, New York; Le Consortium, Dijon; The Art Institute, Chicago; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Messager also participated in group exhibitions at CAPC, Bordeaux; Grand Palais, Paris; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; MCA, Chicago; Guggenheim, New York; Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev; Kunstmuseum Bern; and Parasol Unit, London.
She was part of the Biennales of Moscow, Seville, Havana, Sao Paulo, Lyon, Sydney and Venice.In 2005 she won the Golden Lion for her Pinocchio-inspired installation that transformed the French pavilion in Venice into a casino.
Annette Messager is represented by the following gallery;
click through to discover more of her work.
