Ghada
Amer

Ghada Amer was born in 1963 in Cairo (Egypt). His childhood is punctuated by numerous stays in Libya and Morocco, according to the positions held by his diplomat father. Decided by the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the artist's parents moved to Nice in 1974. Ghada Amer remembers being dazzled by the colors of the French Riviera, contrasting with the sandy color omnipresent in Cairo. In 1984, when her parents moved back to Egypt, Ghada Amer started an art program at the Villa Arson in Nice against their advice. Every year, she returns to Egypt to visit her family. She is then affected by the socio-political changes and the rise in power of radical ideological discourses.

At the Villa Arson, when she was about to specialize, the artist was refused access to painting classes: pictorial figuration would be outdated and the chances of success for a woman painter would be minimal. The feeling of injustice induced by this refusal is a determining moment in her life as an artist, who becomes aware of the exclusion of women in the historiography of art. She thus trained in drawing and sculpture. During her third year, she spent two semesters at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston studying sculpture. She discovered contemporary and committed women artists such as Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger.

The artist has had numerous exhibitions around the world: Villa Arson (Nice), International Biennial of Istanbul, Espace Karim Francis (Cairo), Le Magasin (Grenoble), Johannesburg Biennial, Venice Biennial, Whitney Biennial (Whitney Museum of Art, New York), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon, Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Anadil Gallery (Jerusalem), Busan Museum of Fine Arts (South Korea), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Hayward Gallery (London), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Modena Museet (Stockholm), Gagosian (London ; Los Angeles), Kukje Gallery (Seoul), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Institut du monde arabe (Paris), Dallas Contemporary, Biennale de Rabat. 

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