Pregnant
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Polish, 1930–2017
1981-82
A floor installation of twenty-three cocoon-like bundles made from birch branches, wire, and fabric in which Abakanowicz transforms natural materials into forms that suggest pregnancy, vulnerability, and the human body.
At first glance you see two large, dark, organic masses reclining on the gallery floor surrounded by scattered, twiglike rods—the braided, coarse surfaces read as both vegetal and bodily, intimate in scale yet uncanny against the bright, empty room.
Part of Abakanowicz’s influential work that brought textile techniques and found materials into monumental sculpture, Pregnant helped expand postwar sculpture toward corporeal, collective, and memory-laden forms.
Medium
Birch branches, wire and fabric, twenty-three parts
Dimensions
Two bundles, 21 1/2 x 69 1/2 x 22" (54.6 x 176.5 x 55.8 cm) and 21" x 7'8" x 22 1/2" (53.3 x 233.8 x 57.1 cm); twenty-one bundles ranging from 16 1/2 (41.9 cm) to 71" (180.3 cm) in length
Classification
Department
Credit
Purchase
Accession
336.1985.a-w
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
