In Ghada Amer's text embroidered paintings, the artist deploys citations and quotes about female identity and empowerment. In these paintings, carefully embroidered canvases highlight problematic constructs of female identity to draw attention to the erasure of women's liberation in Western society. The artist states:

“In Western societies, there is an assumption, especially among the younger generations, that the battle of the sexes has been won, that women have been liberated, and that their rights are secure. And yet, we are witnessing today a sharp regression of women’s rights and a stark rise of violence against women. However, in countries where one assumes women’s rights to be limited or absent, such as in Egypt, Iran, Afghanistan, or Mexico, women of the younger generation know they have a lot to gain from fighting for those very same rights that are eroding in the West."

In 'Body Culture' (2021) Amer cites a quote by Naomi Wolf from her book 'The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women', it reads “A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.”

Ghada Amer has been committed to exploring issues surrounding women– the politics of their representation and their cross cultural perception. Amer’s wide-ranging, daring art practice that spans over three decades, works across many media including painting, installation and sculpture.  Many works in Amer’s oeuvre begin with female nude images appropriated from pornographic magazines. While typically viewed as a vehicle for male pleasure, Amer’s works transform them into emblems of women in states of euphoria, ecstasy, and liberation.  

'GIRLS IN WHITE AND GOLD' (2024), was made using giant flattened cardboard boxes shaped as screens, which were later cast in bronze. On each freestanding box, Ghada Amer displays prominently and on each side images of hypersexualized women’s bodies. Although rendered in bronze, they retain the form and memory of the cardboard boxes from which they were made.

Ghada Amer’s ‘Frances and Lover’ (2024) is an intimate continuation of a recent group of paintings on cardboard that Amer produced between 2023-24. The use of cardboard as a canvas introduces a raw, tactile surface that contrasts with the sensuality of the imagery. The painting depicts two figures—lovers— that are leant against each other whilst staring out at the viewer. This body of work extends Amer’s investigation of female desire and representation, while echoing the drips and linear rhythms that characterise her celebrated embroidered and painted works.

“I don’t need a prince charming, I need equal rights” This statement stands at the crux of Ghada Amer’s painting titled ‘The Prince’ (2025). The canvas is covered with rows of multicoloured letters forming fragments of the repeated phrase across the surface. The variation of colour within each letter creates rhythm that guides the viewer’s eye across the composition. Made with cotton appliqué attached on canvas, the repetitive statement refers to the classic narrative of the ‘Prince Charming’ we find in fairytales where women are reduced to passive figures waiting to be rescued. Amer’s polemical investigation into the structures within which society deems women fit is expressed through this direct and confrontational phrase, which challenges these romanticised ideals.