Ghada Amer Ceramics

Ghada Amer (b. Cairo, 1963; lives and works in New York) rose to renown in the mid-1990s with depictions of erotic motifs she stitched onto her paintings. These works compellingly interwove an ironic take on traditional role models with a confident reimagination of the painterly medium by combining it with embroidery. In 2014, the artist turned to working with clay, initially using it to produce models for her steel sculptures, then developing increasingly impromptu shapes. After making abstract colorful clay sculptures that stand out for their coarse-grained contours, she was awarded a two-year residency at the Greenwich House Pottery in New York, where she created works that are without parallel in the worlds of fine art or ceramics. Amer starts out with large-format thin slabs of clay that are extraordinarily difficult to handle, painting women's portraits on both sides and then bending the slabs and standing them on edge. This book presents numerous works from both series of ceramics as well as documentary photographs showing the artist at work in the studio. With two essays by Justine Ludwig and Britta Schmitz and a conversation between Sebastian Preuss and Ghada Amer.

The gender politics of abstraction: embroidered paintings and more from Ghada Amer New York-based painter and embroiderer Ghada Amer (born 1963) was raised in Cairo, Egypt, and later educated in Nice and Paris, France. Her experiences with sexism in both locations served as the impetus for her to forge new ground in a range of mediums, from painting and sculpture to ceramics and earthworks. With a background in abstract painting, Amer eventually turned to embroidery as a strategy for infiltrating the male space of painting with a material traditionally associated with women. Her work is frequently based on the images of female figures found in magazines, through which she explores the constructions of gender, sexuality and eroticism. Her embroidery is intentionally loose, with threads dangling from the canvas, provoking a pictorial effect not unlike Pollock's splattered paint. More recent works introduce a verbal element, with quotations and aphorisms. This volume reproduces these pieces along with a selection of works from across her career.

Artists, critics, curators, and scholars develop theories of craft in relation to art, chronicle how fine art institutions understand and exhibit craft media, and offer accounts of activist crafting.

A global survey of 100 of today's most important clay and ceramic artists, chosen by leading art world professionals. Vitamin C celebrates the revival of clay as a material for contemporary visual artists, featuring a wide range of global talent as selected by the world's leading curators, critics, and art professionals. Clay and ceramics have in recent years been elevated from craft to high art material, with the resulting artworks being coveted by collectors and exhibited in museums around the world. Packed with illustrations, Vitamin C is a vibrant and incredibly timely survey - the first of its kind. Artists include: Caroline Achaintre, Ai Weiwei, Aaron Angell, Edmund de Waal, Theaster Gates, Marisa Merz, Ron Nagle, Gabriel Orozco, Grayson Perry, Sterling Ruby, Thomas Schütte, Richard Slee, Clare Twomey, Jesse Wine, and Betty Woodman. Nominators include: Pablo Leon de la Barra, Iwona Blazwick, Mary Ceruti, Dan Fox, Jens Hoffmann, Christine Macel, James Meyer, Jed Morse, Beatrix Ruf, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Nancy Spector, Sheena Wagstaff, and Jonathan Watkins.

Text by Maura Reilly, Laurie Ann Farrell. Interview with Martine Antle.