art
Ghada Amer, My body, My choice
Ghada Amer’s garden installation takes up the well-known battle cry promoted by the women’s and gender equality movement since the 1970s “my body my choice” and spells each of its letters in a red resin box filled with plants. While over the past fifty years, this tagline has been co-opted by a number of groups around the world with entirely contradictory agendas, Ghada Amer’s garden, like her art in general, reminds us of the early intent of the mantra, that of promoting women’s rights and equality. In an interview with Sahar Amer in April 2022, Ghada Amer states: “In Western societies, there is an assumption, especially among the younger generations, that the battle of the sexes has been won, that women have been liberated, and that their rights are secure. And yet, we are witnessing today a sharp regression of women’s rights and a stark rise of violence against women. However, in countries where one assumes women’s rights to be limited or absent, such as in Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, or Mexico, women of the younger generation know they have a lot to gain from fighting for those very same rights that are eroding in the West. So they are not letting down their guard and they are continuing to fight fiercely.” The phrases that Ghada Amer sculpts for her garden architecture are similar in that regard to the sentences that she embroiders on her canvases. These sentences are taken from a number of male and female authors from different backgrounds and they are intended to remind us of central teachings and wisdom related to women’s rights. Amer says that “by reading and repeating these sentences, they will hopefully become mantras, incantations that the viewer will end up remembering.” She adds that “women’s rights can never be taken for granted. Women must continuously mobilize, fight, and never let their arduously acquired rights decline, fade away and vanish.”