MARK HER WOR DS
The artist Ghada Amer uses a powerful creative vocabulary to confront our preconceptions of womanhood
While she was studying for her art degree in Nice in the 1980s, Ghada Amer was refused entry to a painting class because it was reserved for male students. This prompted her to scour the university’s library for books about female painters, only to discover there were none. ‘I thought, “So, painting is a male field, it’s a male medium,”’ she says. ‘I was very upset – but anger is the motivator of my work.’
Born in Cairo, raised in the South of France and now living in New York, Amer has been practising art for 30 years. Her output encompasses embroidery, sculpture, large-scale garden installations and acrylic on canvas, all imbued with bold, feminist messaging. She often uses dichotomies to challenge the objectification of women: among her most striking pieces are nude female figures in brazen sexual poses depicted delicately in thread, tangled stainless-steel wire sculptures with womanly forms that defiantly hold the gaze of their viewer; and bulky, stacked blocks printed with extracts from the mediaeval erotic Arabic text The Encyclopaedia of Pleasure. Some of these will go on show at Mayfair’s Goodman Gallery this month for Amer’s first London exhibition in 20 years, which will also see the artist unveil her inaugural indoor garden.
Later this year, Amer will collaborate with Dior on the newest iteration of its classic Lady Dior handbag, for which she has drawn inspiration from her ‘Women’s Qualities’ series, involving planters arranged into words commonly associated with the female gender. The project began in 2000 at the Busan Biennale, where the adjectives chosen by people on the street included ‘sensual’, ‘diligent’ and ‘virtuous’; over the course of two months, these descriptors bloomed into striking red flowers. ‘Nobody said “intelligent”, but I added that,’ says Amer, wryly.
Written quotations championing female liberation and education, whether from literature, the internet or protest placards, frequently influence and inform Amer’s work. ‘The mind is very powerful; it functions with words,’ she says. ‘And I am always listening.’ brooke theis
‘Ghada Amer: My Body, My Choice’ is at Goodman Gallery (www.goodman-gallery.com) until 28 May.