Goodman Gallery presents QR CODES REVISITED—LONDON, an exhibition by New-York based Egyptian artist Ghada Amer in which the artist uses language to ask what it means to communicate across cultures and to truly understand the Other. 

Working for the first time with the traditionally male-dominated Egyptian textile craft, Amer deploys the voices of Eastern and Western feminist activists within a series of new large-scale textile abstract works: transforming powerful statements by Simone de Beauvoir – “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” – and Amina Sboui – “my body belongs to me and it does not represent the honour of anyone” into bold geometric formations that reference the ubiquitous QR code form, a recent visual language that has replaced printed text. The exhibition expands on Amer’s career-long commitment to pushing against the exploitation of women around the world and to inspire all women to reclaim agency.     Since the 1990s, Amer’s Definition paintings have questioned the power of words to capture individual and shared realities. The Arabic dictionary definitions embroidered in the works featured in QR CODES REVISITED—LONDON explore meanings for: “Freedom,” “Love,” “Security” and “Peace” with the intension to challenge audience assumptions around Islamic culture and remind us that these qualities are integral to Arab societies. The work invites viewers to appreciate the overlooked riches of language, highlighting how easily one can become lost in translation.

Ghada Amer (b. Cairo, 1963) has a wide-ranging practice spanning painting, cast sculpture, ceramics, works on paper, and garden and mixed-media installations. Amer’s work is featured in public collections around the world, including: The Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Samsung Museum, Seoul; among others. Among invitations to prestigious group shows and biennials—such as the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and the Venice Biennales of 1999 (where she won the UNESCO Prize), 2005 and 2007—she was given a mid-career retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York in 2008 and an even wider retrospective by the MUCEM across three venues in the city of Marseille (France) in 2022-2023.    Ghada Amer is celebrated this season with four concurrent gallery exhibitions in the UK, Europe, and North America, marking an unprecedented opportunity to experience new and historical works by the artist across continents. This follows Amer’s 2022-2023 retrospective at MUCEM, highlighting the artist’s work across painting, ceramic and sculpture and iconic garden works.