Ghada Amer

Ghada AMER (Cairo, Egypt, 1963) She studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Nice, obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in 1986 and a Master’s in 1989, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1987 and at the Institut des Hautes Études en Art Plastique in Paris in 1999. In 1996 she was artist in residence at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, and in 1999 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1997 she was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in New York and in 1999 the UNESCO Award at the 48th edition of the Venice Biennial. Her work has been presented in many solo and group exhibitions since 1990, principally Orient’ation at Istanbul Biennial in 1995, Ghada AMER at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville in 1999, Echolot at the Museum Friedericanum in Kassel in 1998, Mar de Fondo in Puerto de Sagunto, Dirección General de Promoción Cultural, Museus i Bellas Artes in 1998, the Venice Biennial in 1999, Looking for a Place, SITE, Santa Fe, 1999, Ghada AMER, Institute of Visual Art, INOVA, Milwaukee, 2000, Greater New York, P.S.1, New York, 2000, The Whitney Biennale, New York, 2000, and Intimate Confessions, Deitch Projects, New York and Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2000. Ghada AMER’s work re-uses an activity associated to the feminine world, sewing, as a traditional task for woman, in this way denouncing the roles assimilated by the female universe over the centuries. The artist selects her written images from press cuttings, excerpts of great books, pornographic photographs or advertisements praising the everyday life of Western woman, sews them onto the canvas and concentrates on the iconography to pay special attention to complex combinations of colour and line. It is especially interesting to note that the artist often tries to make her embroidery and the thread ends look like an abstract brushstroke that will always form an essential part of her work, thus creating a cross between painting and sewing. The exhibition being organised by the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern will open 9th September, 2004, and will include a selection of unpublished drawings, about ten of her large-format embroidered paintings and a selection of her sculptures. The catalogue that the IVAM is going to publish on the occasion of the exhibition will contain reproductions of all the works shown and critical essays on Ghada Amer’s oeuvre.