Ghada Amer
1963 in Cairo, Egypt; lives in Paris, France and New York (NY) USA
Ghada Amer doesn't create her paintings with paintbrushes and colors, but with needle and thread, which she uses to create dense surfaces reminiscent of the paintings of Brice Marden , Alberto Giacometti , and Cy Twombly . Yet despite their superficial material similarity, the images actually depict lascivious, perhaps even pornographic, female figures, which gradually reveal themselves as the viewer studies the intricate, carefully constructed, and powerfully dramatic surface. An immaterial phenomenon that suddenly takes on a physical presence. The figures multiply on the canvas, doubling, tripling, quadrupling; legs spread, the triangles of their pubic hair depicted in rainbow colors, as if a "typically feminine" pastime were literally playing with itself. An endless chain of women masturbating, veiled in a mass of cotton and long dangling threads, attempting to avoid the viewer's prying and curious gaze. Born in Egypt, Amer studied painting and sculpture in France and chose to settle in Paris. Her work denounces the Western vision of women, reduced to sexual objects. Gradually, subtly, and insidiously, the artist challenges conventional images of men and women. The effectiveness of her works depends in part on their ambivalence: looking at them, one wonders whether they are intended for voyeuristic pleasure or simply to frustrate the viewer's expectations. The artist's first works, created in the early 1990s, were inspired by the dress patterns included in women's magazines. Her interest lay in their a priori role model, the stereotype we unconsciously take for granted. The unconscious is notoriously obscure: how can we represent its workings? This is a question to which the Arab-French artist provides a striking answer, producing serial pornographic scenes that challenge the dominant male logic by opposing it with his own reflection. Her imagery (artistic repertoire) satisfies the criteria of transparency and immediacy achieved through effective psychoanalysis.
