Author Description

With subjects as delicate and personal as pleasure and love, Ghada Amer shows that it is possible to resist a conventional representation of women in art. Referencing pornography and other popular vehicles directed at a heterosexual male audience, Amer's embroidery-based work contrasts traditional female handicraft with mainstream popular culture. Going even further, several pictorial works refer to well-known artists such as Ingres and Picasso. Taking works from the canon as her starting point, the artist observes the idealizing narrative construction of Western art history, indulging in a conventional presentation of an image of women that satisfies a voyeuristic gaze.