The exhibition

In the last four years of her life, Louise Bourgeois made a series of gouaches featuring a distinctly personal iconography of the couple referencing conception, pregnancy, birth, breast-feeding, the family, and flowers.

Curated by the renowned writer and curator Philip Larratt-Smith and organised in collaboration with The Easton Foundation, this exhibition will present a representative survey of this singular body of work, complemented by sculptures from throughout Bourgeois’ career which address the same formal and thematic concerns.

Louise Bourgeois – Echo of the Morning explores the role of memory, desire, and the passage of time in Bourgeois’s late work. At the heart of the exhibition is a series of gouaches from the final four years of her life. Rendered in an intense red, these images depict couples, pregnancy, birth, breast-feeding, families, and flowers, and reflect key events and relationships that shaped 

Bourgeois’s identity and emotional life. They also demonstrate a symbolic return to the mother, highlighting the mother-child bond as the model for all relationships, while speaking to her sense of mortality. In these late works, Bourgeois identified with the infant. Her need to stay connected grew stronger in old age, as she became more physically frail and reliant on others. The title of the show is drawn from Bourgeois’s late fabric suite Hours of the Day (2006) and captures the interplay of past and present central to her work. The exhibition is curated by Philip Larratt-Smith and developed in close collaboration with The Easton Foundation. Louise 

Bourgeois – Echo of the Morning marks the first solo presentation of the artist in Mid-Norway.

During the exhibition period the documentary film 'Louise Bourgeois: The Rage to Understand' (2025), directed by Marie-Éve de Grave, is screened in PoMo Project. The film plays every hour.

Acknowledgements

The exhibition Louise Bourgeois – Echo of the Morning is a close collaboration between PoMo, Trondheim, and The Easton Foundation, New York.

Exhibition curator: Philip Larratt-Smith

Light design: Sofie Bjarnam (Isometrix Light & Design)

PoMo wishes to warmly thank the following institutions, galleries and lenders for the loans that have made the exhibition possible: The Easton Foundation, New York; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Brussels; Christen Sveaas’ Art Collection; Reitan Family Collection; as well as all private lenders who have wished to remain anonymous.