chapter 23 Ghada Amer and Subodh Gupta

Ghada's piece, titled Red Diagonales,  is a really interesting piece. What I love about the piece is that it is abstract in a way and in another it kind of isn't abstract.  Embroidered diagonally across the piece in a repeating pattern is an image of a girl in an erotic pose. It's painted over with a gel medium. at first glance it just looks like an abstract piece. I thought, this piece looks cool. i like how it's red at the top with black dripping down and from there how the colors drip down the rest of the piece in thin lines. It kind of reminds me of a dead forest with a red sky. Makes me feel like the artist is painting how she see's the world today. The majority of the painting is just black and red. underlying these prominent colors is some blue and yellow and orange (the colors less associated with negative emotion). it's like the sky in the artists eyes is dark; like an evil is running this world. when you look closely enough all that's there is desire or passion or lust. It's like all that people want now a days is to get lucky and have their physical needs met. It's a really sad piece in my opinion. In a world full of darkness the only thing we see is the physical wants and desires. We hide all other things. This piece makes me feel like the artist feels all chivalry and manners are gone and that all we're left with is negative emotion and selfish desires. many thoughts can be derived from this piece.

The next piece is a piece called Very Hungry God. When i was reading the chapter, i read about the twisted charity that this piece is based on.  I like this piece because it was made as a kind of symbol representing the evil intention behind the people who are "donating food" through charity. It was more of a taunt than anything and i think this piece captures that very well. The skull represents death; or in this case, the God of death. It is made out of kitchen vessels which symbolize the food that was supposed to be donated. When you combine the two it's resembles the food which was being offered as well as the idea that was being offered. The idea was not that the people were providing food, but they were providing a poison that would destroy their beliefs and in a sense destroy their God. What i like about this piece is that it shows the act for what it is and puts it in a visible interpretive form. The sculpture is like a god of death for the gods of other religions. This piece is very creative. It is kind of ironic that it was put in a church though. :P