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The work of Annette Messager, begun like the "individual mythologies" of her contemporaries, in the 1970s, is located at a point somewhere between collecting, reclaiming, DIY and play. To all this she adds photographs, drawings, embroidery, manufactured objects or taxidermied animals.
Her themes revolve around intimacy and the female condition, blurring the lines between reality and fiction. She plays with words, emotions, received ideas or frustrations. Her fantasy world helps her to enliven her message, keeping potential anxieties at bay.
No Caption is an installation plunged into semi-darkness, with a scene presented as a city made up of reclaimed objects and toys, covered by the artist with black matte paper and placed on the floor. The lighting gives the objects an enigmatic quality and their projected shadows make up a veritable shadow theatre. Three coloured terrestrial globes slowly inflate and deflate, giving rhythm and pulse to this apocalyptic-seeming world. A gigantic clock ticking off the seconds is projected onto one of the walls recalling the one in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, in which the fantastic architecture of the rich contrasted sharply with the underground city of the poor. We can also recognise the shadow of the cat in the famous Giacometti sculpture. It is as if the animal was walking through an imaginary urban environment in which childhood fears and games come to life.