Ghada Amer
Ghada Amer works in many mediums including painting, drawing, installation, photography, and sculpture, such as The Words I love the Most. Amer’s work focuses largely on issues on gender and sexuality and also tackles issues regarding perceptions of Islam. Many of Amer’s pieces, such as Barbie Loves Ken, Ken Loves Barbie, feature embroidery; Amer’s use of embroidery in her installation and painting pieces transforms the traditionally domestic, female craft into high art. Amer’s embroidered painting pieces, like Grey Lisa and The Big Black Bang - RFGA, have been compared to the abstract expressionist pieces of Jackson Pollock, and her embroidery can be seen as a way of reclaiming abstraction.
In this video, Ghada Amer speaks about the works in her 2008 exhibit in the Brooklyn Museum, Love Has No End. The exhibit represented 20 years of work and featured her embroidered painting pieces, garden pieces, RFGA works, photography and installations. In the interview, Amer discusses notions of power in regards to her embroidered painting pieces of “women that [she] redraws from the magazines.” She stresses that her work is not intended to carry a message, teach others about their sexuality, or to empower women. Rather, her work is intended to inform herself; she states, “my drawings are my diary.” Additionally, Amer discusses her use of Arabic writing in her works on display in an English-speaking country and perceptions of Muslims in the west.
