During Gallery Week Beijing, "The Eternal Thread" by late French-American artist Louise Bourgeois has opened to the public at Song Art Museum. It is the first large-scale museum-level exhibition of her work in China.

At first glance, these hanging sculptures held by thread look pretty light, but they are made of heavy materials like bronze. The heaviest piece is about 150 kilograms. Secure yet vulnerable, fixed but susceptible to change – and this is a permanent state of ambivalence and doubt throughout the entire life of the artist.

The Cell series features a red head sticking its tongue out in both longing and disgust as well as the two white heads facing each other indicating a yearning for trust, communication and understanding. They are portraits of distinct psychological situations and emotional states. 

Unlike other abstract art forms, Bourgeois's works seem easier for viewers to understand. 

Bourgeois "used many different elements. It could be something hard like steel and bronze, or something very soft like tapestries. While inside the cell, there are some common things from her daily life. So the combination turned out to be this huge piece of art that you need some time to read," said visitor Da Ning. 

And insiders say that all her works tell stories, stories of the artist herself as well as your stories. 

"It's a kind of dialogue with a woman who had a very intense work of art which is very directly connected with our life," said Alfred Pacquement, honorary director of the Museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Center. 

Born in 1911, Louise Bourgeois was best known for large-scale sculptures and installation art. She was also a prolific painter and printmaker, exploring a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and sub-consciousness.

Widely seen as one of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, Bourgeois is renowned for creating a body of work that fuses psychological depth with high formal invention. 

"But her work is very accessible and immediately has a visible impact on people who see it," said Philip Harratt-Smith, the curator of this exhibition.

A thread, like that of a spider's web, can be seen as a symbol of Bourgeois's spiritual journey, rooted in consistent emotional themes. It is at once a symbol of something to be feared and a refuge for creatures that call it home – like the danger and safety that appear in her work. Standing under Maman, Bourgeois's best-known sculpture representing her mother, I feel safe. The spider spins its architecture for herself and her offspring to live in.