Happily Ever After

This artwork featured in Vertigo (2005). A Meadow Arts commission. 

Amer’s paintings and installations often employ traditionally gentle crafts such as weaving and gardening to express radical attitudes. She often uses tales, myths and legends that depict common female experience and incorporates fragments of texts into her work. Her commission for Sudeley castle is a structural installation of tall wrought iron letters clad in climbing roses and honeysuckle. Spelling out the phrase Happily Ever After, the work alludes to an engaging rose arbour or a children’s carousel while literally spelling out one of the most common ideals. ‘Happily Ever After’ plays on the conditioned response to this ideal and exposes the dizzying emptiness of this false promise.

Image: Ghada Amer, Happily Ever After, installation view, Vertigo, Sudeley Castle, 2005. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts. 

 

About the artist

Ghada Amer

Ghada Amer exhibited in Vertigo, Sudeley Castle, 2005, commissioned by Meadow Arts.

Image: Ghada Amer, Happily Ever After, installation view, Vertigo, Sudeley Castle, 2005. Image courtesy of Meadow Arts.