Louise Bourgeois

I Am Afraid

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About this artwork

The poetic text in this fabric work is taken from Bourgeois’s archive of her own writings, and is an example of how Bourgeois used writing to confront and explore her anxieties. It deals particularly with the artist’s fear of rejection which plagued Bourgeois throughout her life. This derived, in large part, from the untimely loss of her mother, who died when Bourgeois was 21 years old. In the final decade of Bourgeois’s life, the search for the mother figure became a recurring preoccupation for Bourgeois. Here, a sense of emptiness is equated with the abandonment of the mother.

Updated before 2020

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  • artist:
    Louise Bourgeois (1911 - 2010) American
  • title:
    I Am Afraid
  • date created:
    2009
  • materials:
    Woven fabric, mounted on a stretcher
  • measurements:
    Support: 110.50 x 118.90 cm
  • object type:
  • credit line:
    ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by Artist Rooms Foundation 2013
  • accession number:
    AL00341
  • gallery:
  • subject:
This artwork is part of Artist Rooms
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Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois