The protectress of women in childbirth, Artemis was also associated with the hunt and protective rituals involving animals. It is unclear whether the cult figure is multi-breasted or wears armor with convex designs. Just as Bourgeois reverses Turner s obsession with nature, her work often underscores the falsity of myths. Instead of showing benign images, the Nature Study series combines associations to demonstrate that the goddess and the wild beast, protector and killer, are often the same. Man is a wolf to man, you know, the artist has said.
Many works explore the duality and ambiguities of sexual states.
Fillette , her bronze phallic fantasy featured in a famous photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, has many faces from a towering, roofed dwelling to the ultimate erection to a sort of enfant terrible. In the photo, Bourgeois holds Fillette under her arm in a motherly and encouraging way, with an attitude of utmost familiarity, creating a masculine-feminine symbiosis. She is both comrade and creator, one and other with this curious object. The Cell series explores the relations between microcosm and macrocosm. Cells have many definitions, from a small biological component of our body s system to the cages, pens, convents, and rooms used to confine prisoners, animals, nuns, and artists.