GHADA AMER SANATINDA YASAK HAZLAR
FORBIDDEN PLEASURES IN GHADA AMER’S ART

Summary/Abstract: Due to taboos in many societies, the female sexuality is a forbidden theme. According to the psychoanalysts, however, what is forbidden stimulates desire and this is why forbidden pleasures are more often yearned for. Some feminists furthermore refer to the abundance of female pleasures and endeavor to make this more visible. One can observe a quite similar approach towards constructing a rhetorical language in the work of Ghada Amer. In her work, Amer takes as her subject the female claiming her own pleasure, using quite a unique depictive style. At the same time, Ghada Amer’s work owes to the inheritance and nourishment she derives from numerous sources of cultural richness. The artist, besides employing text and script in various ways in her production and using visual excerpts from popular culture, makes also use of imagery from pornographic magazines or schoolbooks depicting drawings of women in various poses. This article aims to analyze the process of transformation of the female into a plastic language in the work of Ghada Amer as the subject, rather than the object, of desire.

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