I had the chance to see the Louise Bourgeois show at Cheim and Read this weekend and immediately wanted to go home and sew. The show, The Fabric Works, is a selection from one exhibition curated by Germano Celant for the Fondazione Vedova, Venice, Italy, in 2010, and brings together fabric “drawings”, assembled from discarded clothes, sheets, towels and similar material from Louise Bourgeois’ personal collection, as well as two large scale fabric sculptures.

Big points for the hoarders in the debate – to save or not save!

Louise Bourgeois
UNTITLED 2005
Fabric
20 1/2 x 27 inches
52.1 x 68.6 centimeters
CR# BO.26777

Louise Bourgeois grew up in a tapestry restoration studio run by her parents, and was since earlier part of the daily dyeing and re-weaving activities.  Although Bourgeois work with fiber medium throughout all her life, mainly in sculpture,  the fabric “drawings” became her central focus in the last decade of her life.

“Her works on fabric are emblematic of certain themes: marriage, motherhood, sexuality, femininity, domesticity. This focus on the familial results in work of intense psychological complexity, exposing relationships and hierarchies related to female identity and its opposite (male/female, mother/father, organic/geometric, rigid/pliable). Coinciding with an inclination, at old age, to stay closer to home, Bourgeois’s late fabric works provide a sense of introspection – her wardrobe and linen closet became representative of memory. ” in Cheim & Read Press Release

Louise Bourgeois
CINQUE 2005
5 panel piece, fabric and stitching
18 x 14 inches, per panel
45.7 x 35.6 centimeters, per panel
CR# BO.11749

Louise Bourgeois
CINQUE 2005 (detail)

“Clothing is…an exercise of memory. It makes me explore the past…like little signposts in the search for the past.” Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois
DAWN 2006
Fabric book, 12 pages
12 1/4 x 9 3/4 inches each
31.1 x 24.8 centimeters each
CR# BO.28396

“I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.” Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois
EUGÉNIE GRANDET 2009
Mixed media on cloth, suite of 16
11 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches each
28.6 x 21.6 centimeters each
CR# BO.28670

EUGÉNIE GRANDET 2009 (detail)

This exhibition will be on view until June 25th. And it’s definitively a MUST SEE!