“I feel normal, but it’s the other people who think that I am a woman artist, or I am an African artist, or Middle-eastern artist, or Muslim artist… It’s all these adjectives that make you less important than just being an artist.” —Ghada Amer
This past summer, Phillips auction house mounted a unique selling exhibition of only women artists, continuing on its strategy of creating themed exhibitions though its Phillips X private selling platform. The exhibition, titled NOMEN: American Women Artists from 1945 to Today, was curated Phillips Senior Advisor, and former Curator of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, and featured 70 artists as diverse as Janine Antoni, Lee Bontecou, Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Agnes Martin, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, and Kay Walkingstick.
Throughout the show, Phillips produced a number of studio visits with artists featured in the show, the last one being this visit with the great Egypt-born, France-raised artist Ghada Amer (b. 1963, Cairo). In this video, shot in Amer’s studio in Harlem, New York, she talks about how her diverse background influences her work and how she feels being labeled as a feminist artist.