Ghada Amer (*1963 in Cairo) is an Egyptian-French artist. Her work engages deeply with themes of feminism, gender equality, and the complex relationship between the Global South and the Global North. Painting and graphic art have been central to her practice since the beginning of her career. Over the years, however, she has also worked with embroidery, ceramics, bronze, and garden installations that oscillate between figuration and calligraphic abstraction. This tension is also present in these textile works. Amer appropriates the visual language of commercial graphics, opening up possibilities for critical engagement with global zones of political conflict. She achieves this by translating calligraphy into flags and flags into calligraphy.
Thomas Bayrle (*1937 in Berlin) is a German painter, graphic artist, object and video artist. A trained pattern designer and weaver, Bayrle combines elements of American Pop Art and Neo-Dadaism in his work. Through the serial repetition of grid structures, he creates compositions that seem to extend infinitely. In this work, Bayrle applies swift brushstrokes of varying thickness side by side on light-sensitive paper. The paper is then exposed to light, transforming the individual strokes into human bodies and body parts. These figures reflect a spectrum of emotional states, ranging from an expressive outcry to an indifferent turning away.
Placed in paired juxtapositions, the works of these two artists enter into dialogue with each other. Bayrle’s emotionally charged bodies appear to reflect and comment on the conflicts addressed in Amer’s textile works. They invite viewers to engage with these political spaces through their own bodily experiences. Conversely, Amer’s works prompt reflection on what these global zones of conflict do to bodies—how they shape and dominate them, and how bodies can also resist.