The period of joyful, free, and uninhibited experimentation with clay work allowed Ghada Amer to explore the endless possibilities of the medium and of the tools she was learning to use. The artist continued to celebrate the creative artistic outcomes of the practice, however surprising they might seem at first glance.
In this page
Small Experimental Art Forms
The birth of Ghada Amer’s “Thoughts” series can be traced to this period. As she was carefully using the chisel to carve the clay slabs of her earliest ceramic works using her right hand, Ghada Amer began to mindlessly collect the output clay in her left hand, putting them aside only when her hand was too full to hold more.
When came time to clean up her table and to discard the excess clay that her left hand had accumulated, Ghada Amer examined what her non dominant hand had produced entirely by chance. She did not just see a piling of scraps, of noodly strips forming totally improvised forms. Rather, she discovered new, surrealist, experimental artworks, utterly produced by chance, by unfiltered intent. She discovered that her left hand was useful and could be solicited to create colorful, non-figurative, experimental visual explorations.
“I believe the hand has its own intelligence. It’s not only the brain. There is an intelligence of the hand.”
The “THOUGHTS” Series
The “KNOTS” series and abstract forms
Similar to the “Thoughts” series, the “Knots” series can be considered an expression of pure form. These might appear like shapeless, chaotic works, but they are instead a joyful celebration of abstract form and color, a spontaneous playful illustration of the materiality of paint.
Larger Experimental Art Forms
As always, Ghada Amer likes to see big. She does not shy away from wider experimentations and larger creations. She soon began recreating larger versions of her “Thoughts” series in both ceramics and later also in bronze.