One Work at Dia Beacon: Huma Bhabha on Louise Bourgeois’s “Avenza Revisited II”, 1968–69
“With Louise Bourgeois, she understands the domestic horror of the inside of the house and the biological horror of the inside of the body. It’s all connected. But in Avenza Revisited II (1968–69), it’s more about biological horror.
I assume that she was not aware of movies like Alien (1979) because, in what I have read, she never mentioned cinema as an influence. But I think she might have seen images of H. R. Giger’s set design for the movie Alien and vice versa; he might have been aware of her work. There is a scene in the beginning of the movie when the astronauts discover a vast chamber in the alien ship, which has a landscape of Avenzas. They are the alien egg pods.
The ability in Louise Bourgeois’s work to evoke that horror of the unfurling alien . . .
The scariest thing is the inside of you.”
—Huma Bhabha
© 2020 Dia Art Foundation
Produced by Alexis Lowry and Theodora Lang
Video and editing by Dan Wolfe
Music by Randy Gibson:
One Work (Iteration 11 20X19), 2020
Image rights by Mollie Bernstein
Copyediting by Katherine Atkins
Special thanks to Huma Bhabha
All work by Louise Bourgeois © The Easton Foundation
Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York