Studio VU 2018-2019 welcomes Ghada Amer; Lecture
The Vanderbilt University Department of Art and the Studio VU: Lecture Series (2018-2019) welcomes internationally recognized artist, Ghada Amer for a lecture in the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center, Room 220, on September 10, 2018. Her lecture will begin at 3:00pm followed by studio visits with the Department of Art senior art majors.
Ghada Amer was born in Cairo (Egypt) in 1963. In 1974, her parents relocated to France where she began her artistic training ten years later at Villa Arson, Nice, France. She currently lives and works between New York and Paris and has exhibited among others at the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, the Whitney Biennale, and the Brooklyn Museum.
“I believe that all women should like their bodies and use them as tools of seduction,” Amer stated; and in her well-known erotic embroideries, she at once rejects oppressive laws set in place to govern women’s attitudes toward their bodies and repudiates first-wave feminist theory that the body must be denied to prevent victimization. By depicting explicit sexual acts with the delicacy of needle and thread, their significance assumes a tenderness that simple objectification ignores.
Amer continuously allows herself to explore the dichotomies of an uneasy world and confronts the language of hostility and finality with unsettled narratives of longing and love. Her work addresses first and foremost the ambiguous, transitory nature of the paradox that arises when searching for concrete definitions of east and west, feminine and masculine, art and craft. Through her paintings, sculptures and public garden projects, Amer takes traditional notions of cultural identity, abstraction, and religious fundamentalism and turns them on their heads.
Her visit is co-sponsored with The Frist Art Museum and in conjunction with the Chaos & Awe: Painting for the 21st Century exhibition and Symposium (Saturday, September 8, 2018; 10:00am to 5:00pm at the Frist Art Museum).