Spirals of the spider’s web. Spinning and weaving. Inward and outward. Control and chaos. Control and freedom. The spiral can control chaos but it can also unravel. The emotional red is used in the spiral as symbolic of the cyclical nature of life and the extremes of emotion on the recycled tote bag. Louise Bourgeois Spirals, 2005 © The Easton Foundation / TATE London 2021

As a young girl, Louise Bourgeois was dyeing cloth, weaving and sewing in her parents’ tapestry studio in Paris. Bourgeois loved spiders. She described the spider as an artist, spinning thread and creating magnificent webs. It could also mend things like the restoring of tapestries in her childhood. “The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos.”