Ghada Amer is a contemporary Egyptian artist best known for her erotic embroideries that deal with social issues, including sexuality, female identity, and Islamic culture. Through her intricate fabric work, the artist seeks to present a representation of the nude female body which is autonomous from burden of the male gaze through needlework, a traditionally female discipline. For example, in her work Snow White Without the Dwarves, Amer stitches a doe-eyed Snow White with images of naked women touching themselves in the background, a symbol of the princess’s sexual liberation. "I liked the idea of representing women through the medium of thread because it is so identified with femininity," she has said of her work. "I wanted to paint a woman with embroidery, too.”

 

Born in 1963 in Cairo, Egypt, Amer immigrated to the United States as a child and received her formal training at the Villa Arson EPIAR in Nice, France. She participated in the Sydney and Whitney Biennales, and was awarded the UNESCO prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale. She also was the first Arab artist to be given a solo exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which was presented in 2000. The artist currently lives and works in New York, NY. Her work is held in the collections of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among others.