Ghada Amer: Paravent Girls

Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to announce Ghada Amer: Paravent Girls, a solo exhibition of groundbreaking new works by Cairo-born, New York-based Ghada Amer (b. 1963). A pioneering feminist artist of the post-colonial generation, Amer is considered a force to be reckoned with, advocating for female agency and empowerment in the current contemporary art landscape. This exhibition marks the debut of her monumental sculptures—collectively entitled the Paravent Girls—in New York. Commissioned for her major career retrospective that took place across three venues in Marseille, France (2022), three of the largest scale sculptures included were displayed under the rotunda of the historic chapel of the La Vieille-Charité (a former house of charity and asylum). The works that will be on view at Tina Kim Gallery are a culmination of the artist’s years of experimentation and research. Amer’s sculptural journey began with ceramics before its manifestation in bronze; these new works signal a veritable breakthrough in her artistic trajectory. 

Ghada Amer has been committed to exploring issues surrounding women– the politics of their representation and their cross cultural perception. Amer’s wide-ranging, daring art practice that spans over three decades, is unrestricted by medium. She is equally at ease with two-dimensional works on canvas or paper, ceramics, site-specific garden works, and mixed-media installations. Many works in Amer’s oeuvre begin with female nude images appropriated from pornographic magazines. While typically viewed as a vehicle for male pleasure, Amer’s works transform them into emblems of women in states of euphoria, ecstasy, and liberation. Although seemingly anonymous, several female subjects depicted in the Paravent Girls bear identifiable names; for example, Suzy Playing, Jennifer and Barbara, and L'étonnement d’ Amélie (all 2022). Amer begins by painting these figures onto the unfolded surfaces of discarded cardboard boxes, before transferring these portraits into clay, redrawing each of their features in relief. The clay models are cast, eventually realized as bronze sculptures. Amer’s tactile approach is reflected in the raised ridges of the outline across the surface that reveal the imprint of the artist’s hand. A quality of tenderness is brought to light upon close examination.

Titled the “Paravent Girls,” this series exemplifies Amer’s long-standing concern regarding the gaze and the power dynamics at work in the act of looking. Paravents, or “folding screens,” were utilized as privacy devices, often used to conceal an (undressing) woman from view. Mass media have often portrayed screens in scenes of flirtation, seduction, or even outright violations of privacy. Thus, Amer’s primary material of unfolded cardboard boxes serve as a visual metaphor to these screens, calling attention to the roles of the viewer and the viewed. In the Paravent Girls, the female figure is depicted on both sides of the sculpture, as if to defy conservative notions of modesty. As art historian and scholar Isabella Archer remarks: 

Making bronze sculptures is both symbolic and significant. After all, bronze, sturdy and imposing, is the metal of choice for statues that are made to face the elements as well as the test of time.  Monuments and memorials to history, people, places, and allegories are often recorded in bronze in public spaces around the world. [...]

The confidence of Amer’s girls, smiling and playing as they dress or undress themselves and the other, belie the nature of the paravent and recall its humble origins—a cardboard box, a porn magazine—that are given weight and permanence when cast in metal.

About the Artist

Ghada Amer (b. 1963, Cairo) studied at the Villa Arson in Nice, where she was told that certain painting classes were reserved only for male students. This served as a pivotal moment for Amer, leading her to engage with media traditionally relegated as “women’s work,” including embroidery and gardening. Amer has participated in preeminent exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, and more. Her works have been acquired by collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museo Jumex in Mexico City, the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Arkansas, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the Leeum, Samsung Museum in Seoul, among others. In 2022, Ghada Amer: A Woman’s Voice is Revolution was organized by the Mucem (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations) in partnership with the Museums of Marseille-Centre de la Vieille Charité and the Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in France, marking the first major career retrospective of Ghada Amer in France.

Accompanying this exhibition is a catalog dedicated to the Paravent Girls series. Featuring newly commissioned essays by Isabella Archer and Nicolas Misery, the director of the Museums of Marseille, France, this publication will be available in print in December of 2023.