Why Collect a Ghada Amer?

Artsy Collecting
Aug 5, 2013 4:18PM

For any collector interested in the foremost female contemporary artists, Artsy has propped open the door to Ghada Amer’s sixth floor artist studio to offer a sneak peek and exclusive sale of works from the renowned artist’s collection. But why collect Ghada Amer?

She’s a revolutionary artist and holds a place among the most renowned female contemporary artists:

As one of five subjects in Our City of Dreams, a film by Francesco Clemente’s daughter, filmmaker Chiara Clemente, Amer is in the company of renowned women artists—Marina AbramovicKiki SmithNancy Spero, and Swoon—each a non-native who calls New York City their home. While juxtaposing Amer’s artwork and its illicit qualities (see her erotic embroidered canvases) against the backdrop of Islamic culture in her native Egypt, the film presents Amer as one of the few female Middle Eastern artists (as well as Shirin Neshat, for example) who push the boundaries of what a woman is allowed to create—as in her use of the widely accepted traditional forms of art, embroidery and needlework, which she’s subverted with images of sex and desire.

She’s hot on the market:

“A particular feature of the new globalism is the nationalities of the artists themselves,” a recent article in The Telegraph stated. “Americans and Western Europeans tend to dominate the higher price ranges, but there are growing numbers of artists from elsewhere working their way up the ranks. Last week, some of them were making record prices. At Sotheby’s, for instance, a new record of £146,500 was set for Egyptian artist, Ghada Amer ... Represented by the Gagosian gallery in the early 2000s, Amer’s prices took off and reached £100,000 at a charity sale in 2006 ... Amer has since been taken on by New York gallery Cheim & Read, which appears to have injected new life into her market.”

Her work has a place in the public collection of institutions worldwide:

An important reason why to collect Amer’s work (or any artist’s work for that matter) is because it is included in the permanent collection of public institutions worldwide. When a museum acquires a work for their permanent collection, the artist has earned a spot in art history. Here’s a sampling of some of the public collections that house Amer’s work:

Brooklyn Museum in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Samsung Museum in Seoul.

Buy a Ghada Amer for your collection.

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