A French visual installation artist Annette messager A French visual installation artist

ARTWORKS Figure 1. ‘Mes transports’ Annette Messager November 13  - December 21, 2013 PARIS FIGURE 2. ‘Daily’ Annette Messager April 1  - April 30, 2016   NEW YOURK Figure 3.  ’The Messager’ Annette Messager Hayward Gallery, 2009 LONDON Figure 4.  ’And Clean. Up Your Bedroom’ Annette Messager Goodman Gallery, 2009 PARIS & NEW YORK

Artwork – The ‘Messengers’ ‘Articulated and Disarticulated’ Brief ‘Articulated and disarticulated’ is part of the Messengers installation it poses the question of what it means to be human both in a physical and spiritual sense. Also based on the mad cow disease, this work includes a soft cuddly brown cow dragged across the floor on its belly as well as other disjointed and jointed parts. The title Family name- is in the title Puppets are the ‘messenger’, Annette Messager is the ‘puppet master’? ‘Articulated and Disarticulated’ - to unite or connect by a joint or take apart, disjointed, which is what she has done in her work. Elements of her work Form-it is free in its own space for each stuffed figure, individuals are displayed in a different way as well as its type of movement. Scale – variety of them displayed on a large scale, mostly spread out and has taken up most of the galleries space. Shape – her work is 3 dimensional from the use of stuffing and knitting which shapes the figure of the animal. Texture – fabrics she used such as nylon, soft woolly fabrics that you would usually get for a normal stuffed toy. Annette Messager, Articulated-disarticulated, 2001-2002. Installation with movement, variable dimensions Disturbing Childhood memories Nature of female identity Room filled with animal and human puppets/stuffed toys altered in a different form Movements include weird tosses, turns and bounces

How the work is produced Computerized fabric automatons, ropes, pulleys, motors, cables, wooden pikes with fabric and plush toys, fabric columns and fence Messager hangs stuffed animals she created using techniques such as knitting, crochet, sewing, embroidery on bungee cord that pulls the figures up and down.

What HAS INFLUENCED HER WORK? Being a French artist within the 1970’s, Messager was evidently having political, cultural, religious and also social influences to be affecting her work and developing her style as an established artist. Being influenced in a time of riots and chaos within the political world especially is something which I believe has positively affected her work, something that was very clear within her work on ‘Articulated-disarticulated’, whereby Messager uses the concept of stuffed animals and toys being pulled up and down by motor devices to portray her key ideas and themes, aswell as beliefs. The social alterations within this time period focused in a lot on feminism, which Mesager was very passionate about, not only being a female herself, but also being a female artist, which the industry needed in order to clear the way for freedom of expression more so for female artists themselves. Moreover, Messager’s career has seen her to be zooming into concerns regarding self identity, sexuality, symbols, social issues of morality and also the role of women. Regarding historical influences, one of Messager’s most famous works titled ‘The Pikes’ has a specific historical significance in France, being its linking to political turbulence. The Pike was the principal weapon meant to display the guillotined heads of the aristocracy during the prevalent uprising, known as the Reign of Terror, during the French Revolution.

Bibliography Coghlan, Niamh. Redefining Expectation Annette Messager. Aesthetica: August/September 2014 March 5, 2009 - Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre - Annette Messager: The Messengers -http://www.e- flux.com/announcements/38351/annette-messager-the- messengers/ Alan Riding (June 26, 2007) Annette Messager: A bold messenger for feminist art Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/arts/25iht- messager.1.6316141.html-