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Feature: Ghada Amer - Artistic Hits and Misses
By Dilshad D. Ali 23/08/2001
The art galleries of Manhattan's affluent Upper East Side are a haven for up-and-coming artists. Small, intimate shows often serve as a precursor for solo shows at larger, better known museums and galleries. Ghada Amer, an Egyptian-born Muslim, is one such artist crossing the threshold.
Amer, a controversial artist by Islamic standards, is having quite a year. She is one of 20 artists featured at the "Alterations" exhibit at the James Graham & Sons gallery, and her work also is included in the Whitney Biennial and at the "Greater New York" exhibit at P.S.1 in New York City. Amer is known for her nude trace drawings on garishly bright backgrounds and her embroidery and gel medium, one of which graces the stark white walls at the James Graham & Sons gallery.
That piece, "Untitled", from 1996, is full of purple, lime green, baby blue, dark gray and yellow embroidery threads undulating across the 14 by 16 inch plain canvas. Loose ends flutter across the canvas while other bits of thread are stitched to create hands and other body parts. One small hand stitched with purple thread at the top of the canvas, and one at the bottom reach towards each other through the tangle of weaving. It suggests a movement of desire that is indicative of most of her work, especially her nude drawings and paintings.
Amer often steps over the line of proper Islamic art with her paintings. She makes traces from magazines and arranges the drawings in a repetitious fashion on bright, monochromatic canvases. In her more recent work, Amer positions the nudes in variations of repetitious patterns on multicolored torrents of color.
Orthodox Muslims consider displaying the human image in any form unacceptable; painting or drawing a nude figure, of course, as forbidden. The display of the human image is deemed sacrilegious because it attempts to glorify the human figure when it is only Allah (swt) that should be glorified. And since Allah (swt) cannot be presented in form, appropriate Islamic art instead typically delves into abstraction and calligraphy. The suggestive content of most of Amer's work goes against the very nature of proper Islamic art.
Many art critics label her work as "institutionalized feminism" that juxtaposes feminine virtues against stereotypes of desire and lust. Joy Garnett, a New York artist and editor of the e-mail newsletter
Newsgrist, writes that, "in terms of Islamic culture one might identify Amer as an iconophilic
enfant terrible - the Egyptian bad girl. But, she is not interested in cheap sensationalism, nor does she desire to offend. Amer takes pains to avoid any misunderstandings." Much of her work, however, is offensive to Muslims.
But, Amer also delves into work expressing her Islamic background and homage to women. Her sculpture, "Private Rooms", on display at P.S.1 in New York City, is one such piece. It is a series of hanging satin clothes bags on which verses of the Quran specifically dealing with the virtues of women are embroidered. The Quran is very sacred in Islam and using its verses in an artistic sense is a highly sensitive procedure. Repeating verses, especially in Arabic, out of context or in the wrong context can have disastrous results. Amer chose to use a French translation instead of original Arabic to avoid any gross misinterpretations.
"Her aim is not to breach anyone else's code of conduct, but to translate across what are, at times, impossible boundaries," writes Garnett, a prominent New York art writer and critic. She believes that Amer's emphasis on repetition is derived from Islamic abstract art, and thus "are a means to attain or express unity and wholeness through an experience of parts." Yet Amer also embraces a distorted image of women through her nude pieces. One may suppose that despite her occasional shows of respect for Islam, Amer's ideas are clouded by her Western education.
Amer, a resident of New York City, was born in Cairo in 1963. She studied at the Ecole des Beaux in Nice, France, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques in Paris. She was a 1999 artist in residence at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago and a recipient of the UNESCO fellowship. Her work has been presented in numerous solo shows and group exhibitions, including "Intimate Confessions," at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Amer touts feminism in her work, and often contrasts her female images with her Islamic upbringing. "Feminism can be empowered by seduction," Amer said in the February-March 2000 issue of
Elle Décor. This can make for some disturbing art, which can taint the nature of her work for a Muslim audience. In short, viewing select pieces of Amer's work may be a better bet than embracing her as a whole.
Ghada Amer's work is on display at the James Graham & Sons art gallery until August 31, 2001.
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