Ghada Amer

For the last episode of Season 7, I’m joined by internationally acclaimed artist Ghada Amer, who tells me about the creative fuel behind her work:

Anger is a very big motivation for me. I made the decision not to use painting because this was a man’s world. So I need to to paint with, to use something that a woman would use and to, to make painting with it. So I picked embroidery.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Ghada is as comfortable working with a needle and thread as she is with a paintbrush, or forging steel for sculptures or working on one-of-a-kind garden installations. She began exhibiting her work in the 90s, and her art continues to focus on women equality and female sexuality.

Ghada’s work has been shown at the world's finest fairs and exhibition spaces, including, the Whitney Biennial and PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, at the Venice Biennale where she won the UNESCO Prize, at the Johannesburg Biennial, and the Istanbul Biennale among many others. 

I found myself relating to Ghada on many levels. We are both children of Egyptian parents, were raised in Europe, and can see our countries of origin and our adopted countries with the bird's eye view of outsiders. We have both been admirers of Western values but are today horrified by the hypocrisy of Western governments towards injustice in the Middle East.