page_title: Louise Bourgeois
section_title: Maman
hierarchical_section_title: Louise Bourgeois / Work / Maman
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Spinne Skulptur Maman von Louise Bourgeois Fundort: außerhalb des Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Spanien. English: The spider sculpture Maman by Louise Bourgeois Locality: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Spain. Français&#160;: Sculpture Araignée Maman de Louise Bourgeois Localité&#160;: Musée Guggenheim à Bilbao Espagne
context_page_description: Louise Joséphine Bourgeois was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the unconscious. These themes connect to events from her childhood which she considered to be a therapeutic process. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.
context_section_description: In the late 1990s, Bourgeois began using the spider as a central image in her art. Maman, which stands more than nine metres high, is a steel and marble sculpture from which an edition of six bronzes were subsequently cast. It first made an appearance as part of Bourgeois's commission for The Unilever Series for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2000, and recently, the sculpture was installed at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha, Qatar. Her largest spider sculpture titled Maman stands at over 30 feet (9.1 m) and has been installed in numerous locations around the world.
  It is the largest Spider sculpture ever made by Bourgeois.
  Moreover, Maman alludes to the strength of her mother, with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nurture and protection. The prevalence of the spider motif in her work has given rise to her nickname as Spiderwoman. 
  The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver.  My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.
  — Louise Bourgeois
caption: Bourgeois's Maman sculpture at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
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