Sketchbook - Louise Bourgeois, Ste Sebastienne

Blank pages
Dimensions: 17.7 x 25 cm
Made in Melbourne
Exclusive to the NGV design store

Louise Bourgeois’ Ste Sébastienne re-imagines and re-genders the saint as a mutilated, headless woman peppered with arrows, simultaneously evoking conventional martyrdom and a comprehensive cosmetic surgical plan. Bourgeois is best known for her largescale installations and sculpture, but she was also a prolific printmaker, painter and draftsperson. She was a champion of LGBTQ+ equality, who explored a wide variety of themes over the course of her long career, including gender, sexuality and the body, the family and domestic life, the unconscious and subconscious minds, and mortality. Although she exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work had strong links to Surrealism, she never formally allied herself with any particular movement.

Louise Bourgeois
French/American 1911–2010
Ste Sébastienne 1992
drypoint, ed. 25/50
98.5 × 78.5 cm (plate), 120.5 × 94.5 cm (sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1999
© The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS. Copyright Agency, 2021