Ghada Amer's"Paravent girls" at the Domaine national du Palais-Royal during Art Basel Paris from October 15 to 26, 2024
[Introduction is from Marianne Boesky Gallery]
Beginning their lives as abandoned cardboard boxes found on the street, Amer's Paravent Girls take a rich material journey before arriving at their final bronze form. On the surface of the flattened boxes, the artist draws the faces of anonymized women, the excess ink from her deceptively simple line drawings trailing delicately down the corrugated texture of the box's surface. Amer transfers these tender portraits to clay, redrawing each figures' features in relief in the soft, earthen material manipulated by hand. She then casts the sculptures in bronze; the final sculptures retain the form and memory of the cardboard boxes from which they were originally made.
The metaphorical potential of these works is evident from their titles: the Paravent Girls exemplify Amer's interest in notions of the gaze and the dynamics invested in the act of looking. The sculptures form paravents-screens used to separate a room, to differentiate between public and private spaces, to conceal, to withhold, to create a sense of mystery. Yet, Amer's figures-captured here in moments of intimacy and eroticism-are revealed, perpetually, to the viewer.
[Copyright: Goodman Gallery]
