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Ghada Amer at Deitch Projects - New York - Brief Article
Art in America, May, 2002 by Susan Harris
Ghada Amer's recent exhibition featured 57 canvas-covered boxes embroidered with written passages from a late 11th- to early 12th-century book called Encyclopedia of Pleasure, which was also the title of the piece. A scientific cataloguing of sexual pleasures for both men and women, the book, now forbidden in the Arab world, was compiled by Ali Ibn Nasr Al Katib during a free and vital intellectual period in Islam's history. Amer's zippered structures, which were stacked and scattered like crates or luggage throughout the main gallery, some of them upside down, are covered in gold-stitched words (in English) from sections of the encyclopedia that pertain to women. The text, in a plain, sans serif typeface running around the faces of the boxes, was impossible (and probably unnecessary) to read in its entirety, but it was fascinating to pick out, for example, "On the Advantages of a Nonvirgin over a Virgin," as well as other blush-worthy passages.
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A lot of attention has been given to the fact that Amer is an Egyptian artist living in the West. Her work has often been interpreted as a response to the oppression of women under Islam. Until now, however, she had addressed women in general with reflections on love, sex, romance and happiness. Encyclopedia of Pleasure marked a departure for Amer in that she presented information specific to female sexuality under Islam. The exhibition was also a deviation from her last New York show, in which canvases painted with drips and splatters had images of naked women sewn and repeated over the surface, their contours obscured by trailing threads hanging free or lying tangled and flattened in a transparent gel. The colorful riffs on the predominantly male Abstract Expressionist artists were abandoned in this monochromatic installation of repetitive, neutral geometric boxes, which referred to the equally male-dominated Minimalist turf. Moreover, like some of her other forays into sculpture (for example, Private Rooms, a set of satin garment bags embroidered with Koranic texts (in French) pertaining to women, seen in 2000 in P.S. 1's "Greater New York"), Encyclopedia of Pleasure substituted texts for images. It is also worth noting that while in the past Amer's embroidery was handsewn by her and assistants, this work was, for the first time, done by machine.
Combining painting, sculpture, literature and drawing, Amer created a formally and expressively eloquent statement that, in its preservation of a book forbidden today by Islam, honors freedom and the woman's sexuality.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
