Love Has No End: Ghada Amer

Abstract

Art, like psychoanalysis, is a site for cultural transmission and its critique. The work of Ghada Amer, an Egyptian living in New York, speaks to issues that beleaguer contemporary psychoanalysis, particularly the relationship between individuals and their cultural/political surrounds. Her gorgeous paintings, often combining brushwork and embroidery, are infused with concerns such as the submission of women to the tyranny of domestic life, sexuality and pleasure, and the incomprehensibility of love. Amer tackles in a candid and personal way the mystique and impasse between the Western gaze and Islam, inviting us to examine the foolishness of war and violence. The different elements in Amer's paintings speak to the multiplicity of identities that confuse our postmodern existence. They share a life on the canvas, creating a sequence of interpellations, each hailing a different self-state yet allowing us to examine how ideologies work to imprison us.

Notes

¹Organized for the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and curated by Maura Reilly.