Annette Messager: Échos exquis

Product detailed description

This bilingual French-English publication presents drawings by Annette Messager from the past five years. Published in 2025, it accompanied her exhibition at the Festival du Dessin d'Arles, curated by Aline Pujo.

The book brings together one hundred drawings, accompanied by a series of short texts, commentaries and quotations. Their arrangement recalls the Surrealist game cadavre exquis, in which contributions build on one another to create unexpected associations around the drawings. Contributors include Marie NDiaye, Vincent Josse, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Marie-Laure Bernadac, Jean-Hubert Martin and artist Gloria Friedmann.

The texts are guided by a list of keywords selected by Messager herself, which she considers central to her practice. These include desire, argument and sensuality. The publication also features two previously unpublished texts by Annette Messager and an introduction by Aline Pujo.

More than a record of the exhibition, the book stands as a work in its own right, bringing the drawings into dialogue with different voices and associations. It offers an opportunity to return to Messager's drawings and gradually discover new connections between image, word and meaning.

Annette Messager

Annette Messager is a French artist whose work spans installation, drawing, collage, photography and sculpture. She represented France at the 2005 Venice Biennale, where she received the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Her work has also been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, MoMA in New York and Hayward Gallery in London.

Her practice has long explored the body, gender, desire and memory. Her early works examined systems of control and stereotypes surrounding women. From the 1980s onwards, she developed new forms of the female figure – witches, monsters, heroines and figures of protest – often approached with humour and subtle subversion.

Her work is characterised by tensions between opposites – care and violence, order and chaos, playfulness and unease. She often brings together things that seem not to belong together, creating space for humour, provocation and unexpected meanings.