Top image: Bourgeois inside Articulated Lair (1986) Courtesy: The Easton Foundation

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), the French-American expressionist artist most famously known for her giant spider sculptures and instillation art, will have her series, Cells, exhibited at the Guggenheim museum, Bilboa.

This exhibition is notably remarkable as it is the first and the largest instillation exclusively dedicated to the Cells that has ever been presented since the project’s completion in 1993. The exhibition also includes some of the artists earlier works that were imperative to the development of the series, allowing visitors to study the intricacies and magnitude of the collection like never before.

The experience of the Cells allows you to observe and access a multitude of eerily segregated realms, sheltered by a variety of foraged architectural materials, each encapsulating twisted anatomical and spherical sculptures created earlier by the artist. Some of the structures also contain personal artefacts, garments or pieces of furniture which carry meaning, sentiment or emotion from Bourgeois’ life. The multifaceted, psychological series deals with our relationship between fear and pain, the state of the subconscious and the controversial pleasures of voyeurism.

Bourgeois is (arguably) unrivalled as a sculptor, through her monstrous and intensely haunting works she borrowed metaphorical, mythological and archetypal imagery to express her most inner thoughts, desires and anxieties. Deeply personal, her prolific output derived from her inclination to use art in her quest to survive her burdened psyche.

Nineteen years since the Cells birth and twenty three years since it’s completion, the series still holds significance in our collective consciousness. It manages to interpret difficult to define inner tensions, emulates the subconscious a part of ourselves we often dismiss and brings to light the things we do not dare discuss. In a time were mental health seems to be our biggest conquest, yet simultaneously is frequently shunned, forgotten and misdiagnosed by the ones we depend on, the Cells grants the opportunity to confront the darker places within us.

Louise Bourgeois: Structures of Existence; The Cells runs from March 18–September 4 at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao