My Nympheas #3
2020
Embroidery and gel medium on canvas

Sindy in Pink-RFGA
2015
Acrylic, embroidery and gel medium on canvas

Ghada Amer (b. 1963) was born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to Nice, France, when she was 11 years old. She remained in France to further her education and completed both of her undergraduate requirements and MFA at Villa Arson École Nationale Supérieure in Nice (1989). She also studied abroad, in 1987, at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1991, she moved to Paris, to complete a post-diploma at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques. Following early recognition in France, she was invited to the United States in 1996, for a residency at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has since then been based in New York.

Amer’s wide-ranging practice spans painting, cast sculpture, ceramics, works on paper, and garden and mixed-media installations. Further, she often collaborates with her long-time friend Reza Farkhondeh. Recognizing both that women are taught to model behaviors and traits shaped by others, and that art history and the history of painting in particular are shaped largely by expressions of masculinity, Amer’s work actively subverts these frameworks through both aesthetics and content. Her practice explores the complicated nature of identity as it is developed through cultural and religious norms, as well as personal longings and understandings of the self.