THE SHE FOX (Sculpture by L. Bourgeois, 1986)
resides on a pedestal sleek head at her feet - a decapitated hybrid served as if for sacrifice - her cold marble body attacked repeatedly with a chisel in deliberate stabbing fashion.
Technically she has no face and yet she’s watching you through her four swollen teats - organic breathing fierce lonely in her unpredictable cosmos creator and destroyer and extremely soft - soft as the skin of Mother - Satenig.
FEMME MAISON (Drawing by L. Bourgeois, 1947)
Lair upon lair, heavy stone bricks - a three-storied house sprouting from her naked torso -
trapped in the ideal of her home she’s lost a head - and instead there is a stairwell at the door - central metaphor for possible flight to a better place - still she stands hypnotized meditating calculating her escape and going nowhere at the same time - she is stuck. She has already settled for what she’s got.
MAMELLES (Sculpture by L. Bourgeois, 1991)
Once they teased in a décolleté dress once they nourished a newborn once firm, once soft once ornamental to an Armenian sorceress or a Moroccan concubine in a tulle veil, now - on the surgeon’s table parading shyness of solitude and abandonment.
They once belonged now - they’ve become an ethereal vessel of the world’s bravest echelon.
[The Triptych won second prize at the 2003 Hildegard Festival of Women in the Arts, Turlock, CA]