Annette Messager (French, b. 1943) Annette Messager is a celebrated contemporary French installation artist. Working in a conceptual and feminist practice, Messager examines conventional perceptions of women by individuals and by society at large. Her early pieces focused on domestic objects such as textiles, toys, and found objects, and through her later work the artist has continued to question traditional notions of femininity and masculinity. “At first, I felt proud when someone said, 'Your work looks like a man did it.' Then I realized that was stupid,” the artist once quipped. Born on November 30, 1943 in Berck, France, Messager received her formal training at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 2005, she won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale for her installation which transformed the French pavilion through a variety of moving sculpture, notably including Casino (2005), in which a wind machine creates waves and ripples in a large red silk sheet amongst strange creatures and forms. In 2014, she created an installation titled Les Interdictions : a combination of the puppet motif and a pattern of sixty eight prohibitory signs from around the world. The only sign that was invented by the artist is a sign condemning prostitution. She has also had solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and a retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Messager currently lives and works in Malakoff, France.