Oct 29, 2024
Ghada Amer: Playing with Mud
- By
Blaire Dessent
Ghada Amer: Playing with Mud
Oct 29, 2024
by
Blaire Dessent
Ghada Amer: Playing with Mud
Oct 29, 2024
by
Blaire Dessent
Ghada Amer: Playing with Mud
Oct 29, 2024
- By
Blaire Dessent
Ghada Amer: Playing with Mud
Oct 29, 2024
- By
Blaire Dessent
sustainability
Ghada Amer: Playing with Mud
Oct 29, 2024
- By
Blaire Dessent
Ghada Amer, Photo by Bruno Daureo
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n “Playing with Mud”, Ghada Amer’s first solo exhibition in Mallorca, now on view at Kewenig Gallery, the groundbreaking artist presents a series of ceramics and new works on canvas that engage themes of eroticism, femininity and gender stereotypes, which Amer has long confronted. Since her first sewn paintings were exhibited over two-decades ago, featuring beautifully embroidered images of women in various acts of erotic pleasure, Amer has not shied from pushing the boundaries, not only about what painting can be, but with art history and woman’s place within it. With her new ceramic works at Kewenig, she continues to push boundaries, this time with the language of ceramics itself, merging this tactile medium with her ideas and inquiries around Painting (with a capital ‘P’), and fusing abstraction and figuration in unexpected ways.

The artist fell in love with ceramics in part, as a new way of exploring ideas of painting without having to sew. “I started ceramics because I wanted to learn how to make my own prototype and develop my bronze and stainless-steel sculptures…Then I discovered a whole new medium and fell in love with it too. [Ceramics] allows me to paint without having to sew,” Amer explains.

Ghada Amer. Pensamiento Mexicano #3, 2018. Glazed ceramic, 30,48 x 19,05 x 24,13 cm. Photo by Bruno Daureo
Installation view Playing with Mud by Ghada Amer. Remembering Boogie Woogie, 2024. Glazed ceramic, 67 x 85 x 26 cm. Photo by Bruno Daureo
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hile some of the ceramics are built up with “noodly strips” of colorful ceramics, others are open, bowl-like shapes, made with the slab technique, that serve as the canvas for her paintings. “I liked the idea of the slabs because it reminded me of a flat piece of canvas or paper where you can just draw on them. At the same time, it reminded me of my growing up in the South of France, where I saw many of Picasso’s plates, and other artists’ plates, on the wall…so I decided to make these plates that would hang on the wall. I did not want to make small ones and I started to make them very big and I liked the organic shape that is made while rolling out the slab…This is how I started to develop these bowl-like vessels.”

In addition to the ceramic work, Amer presents a new series of exquisitely hand sewn canvases, “QR Codes Revisited”, which play with the visual of a QR code, but reveal quotes around social, political, and feminist concerns. The cotton appliqué method that is used in these works comes from a very old Egyptian practice for making tents. Craftsmen once filled Khayamey Street (the ‘tentmaker’ street), in Cairo, located near Amer’s grandparents’ home, but this tradition is slowly dying out. Wanting to help renew their work, she explains, “At first I had no idea and was even reluctant to try but then I gave them the quote ‘WOMAN’S VOICE IS REVOLUTION’ and they made it (in Arabic) and immediately it reminded me of a QR code…so I decided to develop this idea : taking an ultra-modern visual (the QR codes) and giving them meaning with an ultra-old technique.” The very visually bold and geometric paintings reveal this dialogue between the ancient and contemporary. You have to spend time trying to decipher the message, but even if you can’t, the striking graphics and lettering is beautiful in itself. At Kewenig, a multicolored canvas reveals a quote from Simone de Beauvoir: ‘All oppression creates a state of war’. Visually stimulating and laden with critical meaning, Ghada Amer’s work and message echoes beyond the gallery and into our everyday lives. 

www.kewenig.com

@keweniggalerie

“At first I had no idea and was even reluctant to try but then I gave them the quote ‘WOMAN’S VOICE IS REVOLUTION’ and they made it (in Arabic) and immediately it reminded me of a QR code…so I decided to develop this idea : taking an ultra-modern visual (the QR codes) and giving them meaning with an ultra-old technique.”
Installation view Playing with Mud by Ghada Amer. Remembering the Boogie Woogie, 2024. Glazed ceramic, 70 x 90 x 25 cm. Photo by Bruno Daureo.
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