Celebrated French artist Annette Messager transforms everyday objects into sculptural installations that bustle with creativity, memory, melancholy, mystery, and obsession.
Messager enshrines the images of deceased friends and family, and knits little sweaters for dead birds. Her frequently interactive works are elaborately hand-crafted, with the sacrosanct OCD quality of private archives. Describing herself as “collector, every-task-doer, artist, woman in love, tale-teller,” she fashions her shadowy monuments from an endless accumulation of textiles, stuffed animals, photographs, newspapers, and other detritus that speaks to her from beyond.
Read a classic 1989 BOMB interview with the artist, view images from her recent retrospective at Museo Amparo, and shop for her catalogs and books.
Click through below for an image gallery of work by Annette Messager.
The hanging-stuffed-puppet room at the Centre Pompidou installation in Paris.