Annette Messager En même temps (At the same Time), 2021

En même temps, 2021, an installation of drawings and petites effigies, is inspired in part by art history – drawing on, as Messager says, Constructivism and Constantin Brâncusi to Oskar Schlemmer and Alberto Giacometti.   The opacity and uniformity of these small figures indicate a parity between the forty-some tiny sculptures which are ‘hieratic and upright and represent us humans, and seem to be observing us.’  In dialogue with these small figures, Messager integrates a number of organic, elongated drawings which bring the inside outside, making the unseen seen.  The drawings ‘play on our bodies, our organs, our fantasies; they seep in and circulate, seeming to disrupt the dignity of these little effigies, at the same time.’ 

The petites effigies, the tiny figures that Messager pins and suspends, and personifies and memorializes in her wall installations, represent hybrid forms that recall childhood toys or fetish objects. Often arranged in the style of entomological collections, placed at systematic intervals along a wall, they have been exhibited in diverse historical contexts over the years.