Louise Bourgeois & Tracey Emin

Do Not Abandon Me is a collaboration between Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin that consists of a series of sixteen intimate works. Bourgeois started the series of works by painting male and female torsos on paper, mixing red, blue and black gouache pigments with water to create delicate and fluid silhouettes. Bourgeois then passed the images on to Emin, who was free to do with them what she wanted. Nervously, she carried the drawings with her around the world for two years, until she finally found the courage to adapt the drawings. In one day, she made additions in pen and ink to all sixteen gouaches, and drew small figures that connect with the torsos like lovers and depict the desires and fears of the body. In one of the drawings, a woman kisses an erect phallus; in another, a small foetus-like shape emerges from a swollen belly.

With her additions, Emin writes a story in which she articulates the emotions of Bourgeois’s lively gouaches. In this way, the drawings form a joint expression and articulation of physical urges and feelings, openly confronting themes such as identity, pregnancy, sexuality and fear of loss or abandonment. The two artists, each from a different generation, let their works merge into each other fluidly. This collaboration was one of the last projects of Bourgeois, who died shortly before the series was exhibited.

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Double Plus Good

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All images
Artists
Curators
  • Heske ten Cate
  • Laurie Cluitmans
In collaboration with
  • Aveline de Bruin

The group exhibition Double Plus Good presents artworks that are the result of one-off collaborations between artists. The artists in this exhibition take the vulnerable step to open up their practice to other makers, and explore each other’s world of thinking through paper, films and installations. What drives artists to engage in occasional or long-term collaboration with other makers or thinkers?

Double Plus Good includes collaborations between teachers and (former) students, between lovers and loners, between different generations and artists with a shared history. Together they enter a conversation with each other in their work, challenge each other to take the next step or to delve deeper into their matter.

The exhibition is a follow-up to ‘Collaborations’, an exhibition that Aveline de Bruin, of the Collection de Bruin-Heijn, previously showed in the Portuguese Quetzal Art Center and is being further developed and curated with her, curator contemporary art Centraal Museum Laurie Cluitmans and artistic director of Nest Heske ten Cate.

Read the introduction ‘Collaboration creates community‘ that Heske ten Cate wrote for the exhibition and her reflection on a period of intensive collaborations at Nest, as well as the essay ‘Nothing makes itself‘ by Laurie Cluitmans. Everything about the exhibition and the artists can be read here.

Collectie de Bruin-Heijn
The collection of Cees and Inge de Bruin-Heijn grew into one of the largest private collections in the Netherlands. The De Bruin-Heijn collection is managed by their daughter Aveline de Bruin, and in 2016 the family opened their own exhibition space for contemporary art: Quetzal Art Center in Vidigueira, Portugal.

Sponsors
  • Mondriaan Fonds
  • Stroom Den Haag
  • Gemeente Den Haag
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