The Woven Child is the first major survey to focus exclusively on Louise Bourgeois’ fabric-based works. The exhibition charts the artists’ lifelong connection to textiles, and the memories they conjure, through a diverse body of sculptures, installations, drawings, collages, books and prints.

Bourgeois’ fabric works, that she only began working on in her eighties, are among her most compelling and intimate creations. The late decision to create artworks from her clothes and household textiles was a means of transforming as well as preserving the past. Bourgeois incorporated these objects, which held memories associated with specific places and people, into sculptural installations that will be on display at the Gropius Bau, such as her Cells and free-standing “pole pieces”. This deeply-researched exhibition sheds a new light on Bourgeois by linking her fabric works to her material processes, her own biography, and themes of the body, memory, femininity, trauma and repair.

Curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director, Hayward Gallery, and Julienne Lorz, former Chief Curator, Gropius Bau.