Annette Messager’s installations create a visually stunning space for contemplation about the reconstitution of gender in contemporary society. Throughout a forty-year career, Messager has engaged with a variety of media: In the 1970s, she worked mainly in collaged and knitted works, with stuffed birds as a recurring motif. Later, she broadened to media such as drawings, photographs, and installations with a strong focus on clothes and plush figures. A complex, pictorial language connects the French conceptual artist’s work, as well as an overriding interest in how delicate components can be fragmented and recombined to form something new.  

Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Annette Messager: Exhibition/Exposition assembles a selection of the artist’s works, including her most recent installations and celebrated pieces from across her career. With an essay by the exhibition’s curator, Florence Thurmes, and an interview with Messager by the museum’s director, Marion Ackermann, the beautifully produced book provides an opportunity to rediscover this important contemporary artist.