Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh
Ghada Amer (b. 1963, Egypt) is renowned for combining delicate needlepoint with painted canvases that celebrate female empowerment and sexuality. Her kaleidoscopic compositions range from tangled abstract forms to portraits of personal friends to poetic declarations of female strength. Her practice also includes sculpture, ceramics, mixed-media installations and works on paper that continue her exploration of feminist themes.
Amer moved from Cairo, Egypt to Nice, France at age eleven. She earned both a BFA and MFA from the Villa Arson in Nice. In 1997, she was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and in 1999, she received the UNESCO award at the Venice Biennale. The artist has been granted numerous solo exhibitions including a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008. Today, her works are found in numerous prestigious collections, including the Arab Museum of Modern Art (Qatar), Guggenheim Museum (Abu Dhabi), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
Reza Farkhondeh (b. 1963, Iran) received a BA from the University of Tehran, a BFA in Painting at the Beaux-Arts de Dijon, and an MFA from the Villa Arson in Nice. Together, Ghada Amer and Reza Farkondeh create multi-layered mixed media prints. The two have been collaborating on projects under the moniker RFGA for the past eighteen years.
Related Works
- Amer and Farkhondeh often reference lowbrow culture in their collaborative work, as in the comic book-themed piece For Wonder Women. Santa Fe artist Diego Romero also references the legendary superhero in an adulatory portrait of his wife. View his work.
- Another notorious creative duo in the collection is Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Check out a series of books about some of their most famous projects. View their work.
