Kimberly Lamm: The Sexual Stitch - Ghada Amer and the Affective Labour of Images by Goldsmiths UOL

This essay brings Rozsika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch to bear on Ghada Amer’s embroidered canvasses to argue that her body of work reveals the affective labor that goes into presenting oneself as an image of sexual availability. Embroidery, which, as Parker shows, has a historically low place on the scales of both art and work, is a means for Amer to reveal the ubiquitous labor women perform composing images that create auras of sexual stimulation and comfort. Together, Amer’s and Parker’s arguments create possibilities for seeing the connections between the imperative within the West that women put their bodies on sexual display, and the imperative within the Islamic Middle East that women wear the veil: two connected dimensions of the affective labor women perform sustaining images of community.