Annette Messager: Joyously Cruel at the LAM

Published on 22 June 2022, by Harry Kampianne

This key figure in the French art scene takes over the Musée D'art Moderne et Contemporain in Villeneuve-d'Ascq (LAM) for one of the most important exhibitions since her 2007 retrospective at the Centre Pompidou.

Annette Messager (b. 1943), Mes enluminures (Brute) (My Illuminations (Raw), 1988,... Annette Messager: Joyously Cruel at the LAM

Annette Messager (b. 1943), Mes enluminures (Brute) (My Illuminations (Raw), 1988, graphite, Indian ink, and pencil on paper, 16.9 x 16.9 cm/6.7 x 6.7 in.
FRAC Picardie Hauts-de-France, Amiens.
Photo: André Morin

Annette Messager loves to confuse the issue. Her voice, repeating in a loop “comme si” ("as though") from the entrance of the exhibition, transports visitors to an irrational space-time of acidic, sometimes cruel tales with a touch of her feminist-tinged humor. A magnificent venom that she distills in the…

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