Oscar Bonilla

Oscar Bonilla
Maman
The piece that I am going to be talking about is Louise Bourgeoisies 1996 Maman Piece or Spider piece. The reason why I have chosen to talk about this particular piece is because it’s a piece that grabbed my attention since I saw it on the ICA Boston website.
This particular piece stands at over ten feet tall and it is made completely out of bronze, bearing no color. After reading about it I discovered that this is one of her most famous pieces and that there are dozens of replicas of this piece that have been placed in different areas around the world some of which stand at more than 30 feet tall.
The gender representation on the Maman piece to me, looking at it from a point of view from a person who has never heard of the artist, is a male representation. To me it is more of a male representation because I believe that a spider is more commonly taken as a threatening insect, which implies a more threatening gender representation. It also gives me a male representation because of the position that he sculpture is put in. The sculpture or spider is put in a position where it looks like it’s getting ready to attack or to defend something and normally in gender representation the male is more of a the protecting or opposing figure. After reading more about Louise Bourgeois and knowing that she had a troubled childhood, I understood that the spider is actually intended to represent Louise’s mother, who in some ways was her protection or her comfort.
I believe that this piece is really effective because it grabs ones attention easily. Just the shire fact that it is a spider and it is something that not many people would choose to use in their art. Another thing that makes it effective is the size of the sculpture, which makes it easy to be intimidating.
I like this piece more than all of Louise’s other pieces because to me it is more of a stronger piece. I consider it to be more of a stronger piece because it could be interpreted in many different ways, for example it can be expressed as a piece that brings comfort or as a piece that is more imposing. I believe that you could interpret this piece depending on who you are and where you are coming from.