(born in Cairo in 1963)
The definition of the word fear in English, 2007, signed, titled and dated 2007 on the reverse, embroidery and gel medium on canvas, 185 x 152 cm

Provenance:
Galleria Francesca Minini, Milan
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Rovereto, MART, La parola nell’arte. Ricerche d’avanguardia nel Novecento dal Futurismo ad oggi attraverso le collezioni del MART, 10 November 2007- 6 April 2008.

Using embroidery with other media to create works of intense beauty and languid charm, Ghada Amer has continually challenged convention and turned traditions on their head. With a keen sense of her own role as a woman and of the values of womanhood generally, she forges ahead on her relentless artistic journey.
Ghada Amer

Born in Egypt in 1963, Amer moved to Southern France at the age of 11. This experience was jarring, as she sought to abandon the cultural norms of her Muslim upbringing once confronted with French so ciety. Ten years later, she began her artistic training in Nice and then moved to Paris. It was in Nice that some of her earliest creative rebellions took place. During the formative stage of her career, she turned to embroidery in place of the traditional oil or acrylic media found in the Western paintings and decided to incorporate French text into her compositions, although her instructors had expected her to use Arabic calligraphy. “I wanted to invent a new way of painting that would be associated with women’s activities,” she explains. “It was a necessity to address women’s issues by fi rst addressing the medium”. In essence, what was expected of her as a woman, a foreigner and an artist would inspire her to rebel with determination. “I have always addressed these issues, even as an art student,” Amer affi rms.

Perhaps even more affecting for the artist was her return to Egypt in the late 1980s after a long absence. Upon arriving in Cairo, Amer quickly noted the dra matic transformation that had taken hold of her na tive country. Gone were the days in which women went about their daily lives with ease. What now existed was a strict code of moral behaviour that dic tated virtually every aspect of their existance, above all, their physical posturing in Egyptian society. This was to have an inescapable affect on Amer. Retur ning to France she feverishly embarked on creating work that underpinned the universal subjugation of women. Undeterred by the so-called cultural divides between Esat and West she absorbed both worlds and then brazenly turned them upside down. In 1996 Amer moved to New York City “to become an international artist!” she proclaims with excitement. “For me, this was the centre of the art world and the art market and I wanted to be a part of that.”

Along with other works executed between 2005 and 2007 like “Reign of Terror” and the “English defi ni tion of Terror” and of “Terroorism”, the Defi nition of the word Fear in English, is a politically charged work. And yet, like much of Amer’s work, is utter ly striking and painstakingly beautiful, demonstrating the seemingly effortless ways in which she combines thought-provoking content with an acute sense of visual poetry

From: Maymanah Farhat, The Creative Rebellion of Ghada Amer, Canvas magazine 2010