Curator, Sarah Suzuki: Louise Bourgeois moved from France to New York in 1938, where she eventually studied at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 and there, she came into contact with a number of European Surrealist artists who had taken refuge in the States during World War II.
Curator, Jodi Hauptman: Sleeping Figure is part of a group of more than eighty totemic works made in wood known as “Personages.” Bourgeois was an artist for whom certain motifs and themes recurred across mediums.
Curator, Sarah Suzuki: Surrealism—with its biomorphic forms and totemic figures—was just one of many touchstones for Bourgeois, who made use of her own biography to address larger themes of motherhood, femininity and sexuality.