Annette Messager

I recently had the opportunity to visit the MoMA and it was there that I was first introduced to the work of Annette Messager. I was first drawn to her series of work named "My Vows" because of its unique installation. This piece consists of close-up and partial images of body parts that, when put together, don't make up a whole figure, but instead create a collage of mixed bodies in a confusion of identity. It is unable to tell what parts belong to whom. The piece acts as an inclusive representation of humanity. These works also adopt some meaning from the artist's Catholic upbringing. The large assortment of photographs of the body bring to mind the images left at sites of religious pilgrimage by the religiously devoted.
Messager had created her own aesthetic work by combining the flat, smooth surface inherent in a photograph with organic materials such as mesh and string. It is this combination that takes Messagers work out of the realm of being strictly visual and gives it sculptural aspects as well. Each individual image is hung by a single strand of string. Messager arranges the images into shapes such as a circle, a heart, and a spiral.
The images themselves are also visually interesting. Each picture is black and white with a black background and high contrast that makes the objects stand out. The images are also framed in black which further enhances them. This black and white aesthetic is one that I have always been drawn to and Messager pulls it off beautifully in her work.