Louise Bourgeois’ intervention at the opening of Tate Modern in 2000 — her monumental Spiders and Towers — fundamentally altered how many of us understood the relationship between space and emotion. These were not sculptures to be observed at a distance, but structures to be moved around, beneath, and within.
Bourgeois conceived the towers, with their multiple platforms and winding stairs, as stages for intimate and often uncomfortable encounters — between strangers, friends, and oneself. The work did not instruct emotion; it elicited it through spatial condition.
Her Cells series, assembled between 1986 and 1998 and documented in this book, develops this thinking with even greater intensity. These enclosed environments are constructed from doors, windows, cages, domestic objects, and fragments of memory. They cannot be entered, only approached and circled. The viewer becomes acutely aware of their own position — looking, being looked at, held at the edge.
Rooted in Bourgeois’ own experiences, the work is often confronting. But its power lies not in confession, rather in orchestration. The Cells create spaces where vulnerability, isolation, desire, and intimacy are not explained, but felt. They operate as thresholds charged with emotional consequence.
As Bourgeois herself observed:
“Each Cell deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at. The Cells either attract or repulse each other. There is this urge to integrate, merge, or disintegrate.”
For MAAPS, this distinction is essential. In creating space for others — albeit more calmly rendered — our concern is not expression, but experience. We are interested in how material, colour, texture, memory, and the Readymade can be arranged to produce physical and sensorial engagement without instruction.
Bourgeois reminds us that space need not be neutral to be responsible. When carefully held, it can carry complexity, tension, and meaning — allowing each person to encounter it on their own terms.
Louise Bourgeois, The Secret of the Cells – ISBN 978-3-7913-4007-4
