Both prison and refuge: Louise Bourgeois’ Cells at the Guggenheim, Bilbao
![An exhibition space featuring a circular metal cage with a character hanging from its roof and a large circular mirror.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QHdHKEgNN3TcZozAyjgup7-415-80.jpeg)
Louise Bourgois was 97 when she made the last of her Cell works in 2008, two years before she died.
In Cell (The Last Climb), an open door leads into a rusty wire cage. It’s not a prison but a gateway; inside, a spiral staircase leads up and out of the cage to the sky, and large blue glass balls are suspended like bubbles waiting to float free. At the centre of the cage is a brilliant blue rubber droplet like a giant tear – not falling but buoyed by this sense of floaty lightness – which Bourgeois described as a self-portrait.
For an artist who said she made art as a means of survival and a way of confronting fear, this work, a clear metaphor for death, is remarkably uplifting. It’s not fraught with anxiety, in the way that her works that typically explore unconscious emotions surrounding childhood memories, growing up, sex and motherhood are. Bourgeois worked tirelessly through her 70s, 80s and 90s with an urgent combative energy that one can only marvel at here. Perhaps by 2008 she was finally ready to let go.
Bourgeois created 60 Cells. Of the 28 on display at the Guggenheim Bilbao, most were created in the last two decades of her life. Each Cell is a world; a stage set to either be contained in, journeyed through, peeked voyeuristically into, or be excluded from.
They are precise, contained, and complete spaces, featuring sculpture and objects that Bourgeois owned or gathered to tell autobiographical stories. Some are more literally based on memories than others. One draws on a memory of her parents' bedroom, another features a marble replica of her childhood home with a guillotine poised above it, anticipating a moment when it might all disappear.
Frank Gehry’s gallery interior, a seemingly endless maze of rooms and corridors that curve and twist, grow and shrink, is an invitation to get lost. That suits Bourgeois’ work down to the ground, because it’s never about what's outside, but always the warped, shape-shifting unpredictability of her interior world.
Like a spider’s web, this world is a place of seductive, horrible beauty. Inevitably you are drawn into it, and as you are you begin to see that the unconscious world she was exploring has its own own internal logic. Repeating symbols – mirrors (confrontation of the self), doors (secrets and safety), limbs (impotence), spiders (the mother) – become a language, which help you to interpret her reality. Eventually a bigger picture emerges. The show, like the body itself, is a place of trauma and escapism, fear and magic: both prison and refuge.
In Cell (The Last Climb) (pictured), an open door leads into a rusty wire cage. It’s not a prison but a gateway – this work, a clear metaphor for death, is surprisingly uplifting. Pictured: Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Courtesy Collection National Gallery of Canada and The Easton Foundation / VEGAP, Madrid
Bourgeois worked tirelessly through her 70s, 80s and 90s with an urgent combative energy that one can only marvel at here. Pictured: Louise Bourgeois inside (Articulated Lair), which she considered the first of her Cells, in 1986. Courtesy The Easton Foundation / VEGAP, Madrid
Spider, 1997. Courtesy The Easton Foundation / VEGAP, Madrid
Bourgeois created 60 Cells. Of the 28 on display at the Guggenheim Bilbao, most were created in the last two decades of her life
Each is a world, like a stage set, to either be contained in, journeyed through, peeked voyeuristically into, or be excluded from
They are precise, contained, and complete spaces, featuring sculpture and objects that she owned or gathered to tell autobiographical stories
Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim interior is a maze of rooms and corridors that curve and twist. That suits Bourgeois’ work down to the ground, because it’s never about what's outside, but always the warped, shape-shifting unpredictability of her interior world
Red Room (Parents), 1994. Courtesy The Easton Foundation / VEGAP, Madrid / Private Collection and Hauser & Wirth
INFORMATION
'Structures of Existence: The Cells' is on view until 4 September. For more information, visit the Guggenheim Bilbao's website
ADDRESS
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Abandoibarra Etorb., 2
48009 Bilbao
Bizkaia, Spain
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic design
Graphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Birley Chocolate hits the sweet ’n’ chic spot in London’s Chelsea
The new Birley Chocolate shop, a sibling to Birley Bakery, is a confection of colour as delicious as its finely crafted goods
By Melina Keays Published
-
Feel at home at Auberge, Château La Coste's new inn for culture lovers
Auberge La Coste sits at the heart of the art-filled estate, minutes away from the joyful town of Aix-en-Provence
By Harriet Thorpe Published
-
Yoshitomo Nara’s skittish universe takes over the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum
‘Yoshitomo Nara’ at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum is the first major European retrospective to explore four decades of the Japanese artist’s oeuvre
By Sofia de la Cruz Published
-
Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhood
Tschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes
By Millen Brown-Ewens Published
-
Wanås Konst sculpture park merges art and nature in Sweden
Wanås Konst’s latest exhibition, 'The Ocean in the Forest', unites land and sea with watery-inspired art in the park’s woodland setting
By Alice Godwin Published
-
Pino Pascali’s brief and brilliant life celebrated at Fondazione Prada
Milan’s Fondazione Prada honours Italian artist Pino Pascali, dedicating four of its expansive main show spaces to an exhibition of his work
By Kasia Maciejowska Published
-
John Cage’s ‘now moments’ inspire Lismore Castle Arts’ group show
Lismore Castle Arts’ ‘Each now, is the time, the space’ takes its title from John Cage, and sees four artists embrace the moment through sculpture and found objects
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Gerhard Richter unveils new sculpture at Serpentine South
Gerhard Richter revisits themes of pattern and repetition in ‘Strip-Tower’ at London’s Serpentine South
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Peter Blake’s sculptures spark joy at Waddington Custot in London
‘Peter Blake: Sculpture and Other Matters’, at London's Waddington Custot, spans six decades of the artist's career
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Don’t miss: ‘The Mother & The Weaver’ dissects the complexity of motherhood
‘The Mother & The Weaver’ at the Foundling Museum, London, looks at the complex role of the mother in art from the Ursula Hauser Collection
By Hannah Silver Published