Maman is one of Louise Bourgeois’s most monumental works. Measuring nearly ten metres high, the vast steel sculpture depicts a spider sheltering a sac of marble eggs in its abdomen. The motif of the spider appeared in Bourgeois’s work during the 1940s and she has aligned it specifically with the figure of her own mother, stating that, ‘My best friend was my mother and she was deliberate, clever, patient, soothing, reasonable, dainty, subtle, indispensable, neat and useful as an araignée [spider]’. This sense of reassurance and intimacy is reflected in the title of the work which uses the informal French word ‘maman’ meaning ‘mama’ or ‘mummy’. However, the towering scale and heavy patina of the sculpture present it as a threatening physical presence bringing into play the artist’s complex and frequently ambivalent attitude towards motherhood.