Overlap: Ghada Amer

 

 

Ghada Amer (b. 1963) was born in Cairo, Egypt. She earned a B.F.A. in 1986 and an M.F.A. in 1989 from École Pilote Internationale d’Art et de Recherche, Villa Arson, Nice, France. In 1997 she was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and in 1999, she received the UNESCO award at the Venice Biennale. 

Feminist Artist Statement

The history of art was written by men, in practice and in theory. Painting has a symbolic and dominant place inside this history, and in the twentieth century it became the major expression of masculinity, especially through abstraction. For me, the choice to be mainly a painter and to use the codes of abstract painting, as they have been defined historically, is not only an artistic challenge: its main meaning is occupying a territory that has been denied to women historically. I occupy this territory aesthetically and politically because I create materially abstract paintings, but I integrate in this male field a feminine universe: that of sewing and embroidery. By hybridizing those worlds, the canvas becomes a new territory where the feminine has its own place in a field dominated by men, and from where, I hope, we won’t be removed again. I integrate this same feminine universe into my gardens. When I had to start working outdoors I needed to find some kind of translation, something I could do instead of embroidery, but something that had the same idea. So I thought, “What can a woman do outside?” Gardening was a woman’s activity just like embroidery. This is how I decided to create gardens. My work starts always as a slight critique, then I take it seriously and I try to find the beauty and poetry of these activities. I always try to connect both ideology and aesthetics in my work as a painter or a sculptor, in one way or another. I am very much interested in this specific relationship. Aesthetics alone are not enough for me and a message alone is just propaganda. [source]