Spider 1 (1995);
When Tate Modern opened on London’s South Bank in the year 2000, its visitors were confronted with what remains one of the most powerful works to appear in the Turbine Hall. Three mysterious metal towers accessed by spiral staircases rose 14m from the floor—one enclosed in a rusted steel skin, two others furnished with large mirrors, each platform with a sculpture of a mother and child inside a bell jar. On the mezzanine bridge stood a giant steel spider, poised and predatory.
The installation was like a living dream—or nightmare. Yet it had an overwhelming emotional impact. You could climb the staircases and watch yourself reflected in the unfolding psychodrama. The towers were named, with Beckettian simplicity, “I do, I redo, I undo,” with texts such as: “I am the good mother.” The spider itself was simply “Maman,” a highly-charged title for this viscerally imagined sculpture. It was an assertion of both the significance and distinctiveness of female experience.