Annette Messager at the Antiguo Colegio de San Idelfonso
, Mexico City
Beginning in May, and until the end of August 2011, the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso is presenting the first great retrospective to be exhibited in Mexico City of one of the fundamental figures in contemporary art: the French artist Annette Messager.
The exhibition features a selection of her most representative works, in which she explores diverse techniques including installation, drawing, intervention, photography, collage, and creation of ambiences. The public will be able to appreciate two of her works that have had a significant impact in the art world: Casino (2005), for which she was awarded the Golden Lion at the 51st Venice Biennial, and Articulés-Desarticulés (2001-2002), acclaimed at Documenta XI, in Germany.
The objects she employs in her work, such as nets, photographs, cuddly toys, color pencils, pieces of fabric, and dissected animals, bring to mind her childhood in Berck-sur-Mer, on the French coast of the English Channel; a period during which she felt attracted to the patients in the surrounding hospitals and the optimism and cheerfulness they evinced in spite of their health problems. This is the reason why parts of the human body appear repeatedly in the course of her artistic career, as is the case in Mes trophées (1986-1988), a piece also included in the exhibition, comprised of a series of photographs in which Annette Messager has drawn images that present the body as a landscape of recorded emotions, and that make reference to the fragmented awareness of the body.
Annette Messager’s work reflects the strength of a very personal language that dominates the most intimate essence of human nature.
Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso
Justo Sierra No. 16, Centro Histórico
Phone. 57 02 45 07 / 57 02 32 54
medios@sanildefonso.org.mx
