Femme Maison 2001

Louise Bourgeois made this mysterious piece, Femme Maison, to explore the complexities of domesticity. There is something unsettling about the house that sits on top of the woman's body. It is so simple, and yet so heavy. The texture of the piece gives it an almost edible quality, like a cake made of raw dough. It's unclear how this was made, but it is as if Bourgeois has built this form from nothing but her own hands and her own experience. The house-form is so awkwardly positioned, so precarious and small, like a dunce cap perched on a voluptuous body. It makes me think of the Surrealists, like Meret Oppenheim, who explored the tensions between the domestic and the erotic. But Bourgeois goes further, linking the psychological weight of domesticity with the physical body, suggesting that the home is not just a place, but a state of being. It is a complex and ambiguous work, one that invites us to question our own assumptions about gender, identity, and the spaces we inhabit.