Who

Amer is a textile artist known for her sex and religion-themed embroidery.

Backstory

Born in Egypt, Amer moved to Paris in the 1970s, but it was while visiting her parents in Cairo that she was struck by the clash of Western styles and Islamic dress in fashion magazines and became interested in textile art. In 1996, Amer decamped to New York, trading one of her works for legal assistance in getting a green card. She soon attracted attention for her series of embroideries, which reproduced images from pornographic photos (often juxtaposed with Disney characters) in an exploration of female sexuality, and for her provocative text-based installations. In one, Amer embroidered onto satin garment bags passages from the Koran—translated into French—that relate to women and sex. In another, her translation into English of chapters from an ancient Islamic text, "The Encyclopedia of Pleasure," was transcribed onto cotton boxes with gold thread.

Like many budding art stars, Amer participated in both the first P.S.1 "Greater New York" show and the Whitney Biennial in 2000. Although she only had her first solo exhibition in 2004 at Larry Gagosian's Beverly Hills gallery, she's already earned a major retrospective, a 2008 show at the Brooklyn Museum called "Ghada Amer: Love Has No End." But while her stock is rising in Western art circles, that isn't the case in Amer's native country. Given that she blends sex and religious themes from Islam, her artwork isn't especially popular with the Islamic fundamentalist set, and she's yet to display her work in the Arab world.

For the record

Amer frequently collaborates with Iranian artist Reza Farkhondeh. Together they created a video called Indigestible desert, which features the smashing of six-foot-long effigies of George Bush and Tony Blair.

Habitat

Amer lives in Harlem.

True story

That painting that she traded in for help with her visa to come to the U.S.? The legal bill amounted to $4,000. The painting she gave her immigration attorney is now worth more than $125,000.