"Annette Messager: The Messengers" is the first major solo exhibition for leading French artist Annette Messager to be held in Japan. Painting, photography, articles, objects assembled from found objects, words, stuffed animals, plush toys, fabrics, embroidery, thread and knitting: these and many other objects from everyday life have found their way into the art of Annette Messager since she began working in the 1970s. Keeping her work based firmly in everyday life, Messager explores the various dichotomies and contradictions inherent in the human condition: religion and secularity, humor and fear, love and pain, woman and man, animal and human, childhood and adulthood, life and death, surface and substance. Springing perhaps from meditations on impulsive collecting or the body, from games with plush toys, or from clever wordplay, Messager's art possesses both a childlike innocence and a brutality that afford multiple readings. With a flair for incorporating wry humor into even the most direct confrontations with negative aspects of human endeavor, Messager is able to move and delight people of all generations. Charming and fantastical, and at times taking strange and mysterious forms, Messager's art works are "messengers" that talk directly to our souls. This exhibition was originally shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and has toured to Finland and Korea. The roughly 30 works on show include Casino, for which the artist won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2005, and other important works such as articulated-disarticulated. Profile Born 1943, France. After winning an award for a photography contest while a student at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Message toured Southern Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Israel, and the United States etc. She was deeply inspired seeing Jean Dubuffet’s Art Breut Collection at the Musée des arts décoratifs in 1967. She stayed in New York from 1980 to 1981. Since then, Message has held solo exhibitions at Musée d’art moderne de la Villa de Paris, Musée de Grenoble, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and other major museums in Europe and the USA. She presented at the France Pavillion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, where she was awarded the Golden Lion Award.