“Without desire, life is meaningless for me. ”

- Annette Messager

As a cultural highlight commemorating the Croisements 60, the Power Station of Art (PSA) will present “Desire Disorder”, the first major solo exhibition in China by renowned French artist Annette Messager. Running from July 6 to October 8, 2024, the exhibition will feature over 70 works across various media, including drawings, photographs, sculptures, and installations. This exhibition will not only revisit significant moments in Messager’s half-century-long career but also showcase large-scale installations adapted to the PSA’s space.

Emerging in the 1970s, Messager’s art stands apart from the prevalent focus on gender identity and intimate relationships that dominated the works of women artists of that era. Her works seamlessly incorporate feminist sensibilities with surrealist strategies and approaches. She views memory as a vessel for inspiration, using everyday materials to create assemblages that transcend reality, dramatically constructing a seemingly self-referential yet expansive world encompassing a vast range of experiences. Messager addresses complex themes through multifaceted allegories and fictions, blurring the boundaries between fiction and truth. Her work often reveals tensions and contradictions which reflects the complexity of our emotion life and our existence. The hybrid nature of her works is deeply connected to art movements such as Surrealism, Dadaism, and Art Brut, evoking in viewers multiple associations and experiences - romantic, unsettling, and even absurd. Keenly aware of life’s endless desires, Messager goes beyond the disorder of everyday thoughts. Through skillful use of everyday materials and concise artistic language, Messager explores a diverse array of addressing global social and political issues, as well as more ontological and inner questions. Fairy tales, mythology, and doppelgangers are motifs that recur constantly in her creative inquiries.

Language and words play an essential role in Messager’s approach and serve as the triggers for her creation. Each of her titles carries a very specific meaning. The title of this exhibition, “Desire Disorder” is derived from the artist’s keen observations of her surroundings and her introspective view of her career. For Messager, desire is disordered yet powerful. She sees art creation as the urge to explore the world, the relentless pursuit of truth, and boundless whims and fantasies. These disordered desires arise not only from the inner world of an individual but also from the outside world.

This inaugural solo exhibition in China features the artist’s career from the 1980s to the present, showcasing iconic works such as Casino (2004-2005), which won the Golden Lion for French Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale, At the Same Time 2 (2021), an installation created in recent years, and Tête à Tête (2019-2020), a large-scale installation featuring 75 drawings. Casino, offering an immersive experience, invites viewers to embark on an allegorical journey. A vast, billowing sea of red silk heaves like the inhalation and exhalation of breath, while multiple puppet heads suspended overhead rise and fall. Projected onto the site is a giant clock with hands running backwards, serving as a reminder of the vanity of time and space. The installation weaves together the story of Pinocchio’s adventures and the artist’s personal experience through ever-changing scenes in progression. For Messager, the artist is a player, constantly exposing herself, mixing reality and fiction. The term “casino” refers to both risk and joy, much like Messager’s work, which stands on the tangent between tragedy and comedy.

Dominating PSA’s main hall on the ground floor is Messager’s large-scale installation, Dependance/Independance (1995-1996), in which stuffed animals, plastic, colour pencils, black and white photographs, and various daily objects are suspended from ropes and nets. This work evokes memory and imagination with its grand scale and demonstrates the artist’s reflection on the relationship between different creatures in the world, and her concepts of life and death. Another installation work, Daily, also uses everyday objects to construct one of Messager’s fantasy world. By suspending oversized ordinary familiar objects in a dramatic manner, Messager challenges our taken-for-granted notions of everyday life, comfort and habits and allows hidden narratives to emerge from the mundane, interrogating the symbolic value one sticks on their belongings. In addition, Messager will present in this exhibition a special sound work, As If (2022), within PSA’s chimney, where whispers of the artist will echo through the space taking the visitors to a tour inside their own consciousness. Messager is always questionning the truth and “as if” refers to the way everyone pretends to be, to behave, to communicate, sometimes neglecting one’s true desires or state of mind. Messager gently reminds us that we are all acting in life and we stage it.