’A deeply thoughtful show’: artist Louise Bourgeois at AGNSW

Louise Bourgeois, 1990 © Yann Charbonnier. Dr Lea Vuong, a French scholar from the School of Languages and Cultures, explores the 'deeply thoughtful and sensuous' blockbuster exhibition by French-American artist Louise Bourgeois at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. As you make your way towards the Art Gallery of New South Wales, you will come across the giant sinewy bronze legs of the artist's monumental sculpture Maman ("mum" in French) looming near the entrance. As large to us as humans appear to spiders, Maman borrows the form of a daddy longlegs, but through its title switches both parent and gender. The artist replaces our fear of spiders with the love and protection associated with motherhood. Despite a life and career mostly spent in New York City, where she moved in 1938 and remained until her death in 2010, the artist, born and educated in France, insisted on her "right to defend her Frenglish". Titles of her works and her extensive body of writings move seamlessly from her native tongue to English to a deeply personal intermixing of both languages.