Ghada Amer uses words in provocative ways. What appears to be decorative needlework at first glance, is anything but. Working with woven and embroidered text, often powerful feminist statements across languages and time, rearranged into intriguing geometric forms, the artist invites us to see the common threads in our shared realities. Amer’s message is both clear and coded, requiring a second or third glance. She uses language to stir debate and shift our perspectives.
‘I grew up with calligraphy,’ she says. ‘It is something you see at first, then you discover more. The beauty is in the discovery when things reveal to you. I see it as a kind of meditation. It isn’t a message or a trick, rather a state of how you want a work of art to respond to you.’
