Untitled (I Have Been to Hell and Back)

Gift of Charlotte and Alan Artus

Bourgeois explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career, including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, and death and the unconscious. Her brooding works were culled from childhood memories as well as psychological analyses of sexuality, pain, and fear. In the embroidery on handkerchief seen here, the text “I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful” challenges stereotypical and gendered associations with the medium. An example of her characteristically sardonic wit, the embroidered message also conveys a sense of hope in a bleak time.