Annette Messager: The Messengers

“Annette Messager: The Messengers” is the first comprehensive solo exhibitionin Japan by one of France's leading artists. Annette Messager uses a wide rangeof materials to create objects and installations that draw viewers into strange andfantastical worlds. In some ways, her works are incarnations of her family name –messengers on a mission to communicate something directly to the depths ofthe human mind.

Messager uses many different media and materials, including painting, photography,found objects, words, stuffed toys, fabric, and knitting. From these she createsartwork that convey from an everyday perspective the conflicting sensationsthat lie deep inside us, such as the sacred and the profane, humor and fear, loveand sadness, exterior and interior. While the use of materials such as these havebecome common in contemporary art since the mid-1990s, Messager has beenusing them since the 1970s, in works deliberately seeking to draw out narratives found in the individual. Recently, she has produced enormous installations with mechanisms inspired by the complexity of human beings and their puzzling abilityto nurture conflicting elements within themselves. These works have been critically acclaimed, and in 2005, Messager won the Golden Lion for her exhibition at theFrench pavilion at the Venice Biennale – an honor that brought her much media attention as well. Much of Messager's work is on a large scale and is visually stimulating, and appeals strongly to a wide demographic, not just to the youngerg enerations.