Of all the creatures in the world, it was the spider that French American artist Louise Bourgeois chose to represent her mother—it’s complicated—and public interest in her drawings and sculptures. To whittle down her prolific eight-decade career in art and essay writing to her iconic arachnid sculptures is unfair, but nothing else she produced evokes the same immediate captivation and nightmarish fear as Maman (1999), a ten-metre-high steel spider sculpture for which she was perhaps best known: the impact of walking under the spindly, sprawling legs of the dark, towering spider, which guarded the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern when it opened in 2000, remains an indelible memory for those who experienced it.
In her lifetime, she created one steel and seven bronze Mamans.
These giant spiders have captivated…
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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025