"Almost 9 meters tall, Maman is one of the most ambitious
of a series of sculptures by Bourgeois that take as their subject
the spider, a motif that first appeared in several of the artist's
drawings in the 1940s and came to assume a central place in
her work during the 1990s. Intended as a tribute to her mother,
who was a weaver, Bourgeois's spiders are highly contradictory
as emblems of maternity: they suggest both protector and predator—
the silk of a spider is used both to construct cocoons and to bind prey—
and embody both strength and fragility."
