


The Words I Love the Most
2012
The Words I Love the Most is a 2012 bronze sculpture by Ghada Amer consisting of a large hollow sphere formed entirely from interlocking Arabic calligraphy. The words composing the sphere are associated with love and desire, including terms meaning crazy, anxious, and desire, and are rendered in reverse so that they become fully legible only from within the sculpture. This inward facing legibility is a deliberate conceptual strategy, alluding to the taboo nature of desire in certain cultural contexts. Amer conceals representational and linguistic meaning within an abstract sculptural form, creating a work that rewards close physical engagement.
- Medium
- Bronze
- Spotted At
- Foundation · The Donum Collection
Notes
Documented on Instagram account @donumestate (Donum Estate / The Donum Collection) with the caption quoting the artist: Like writing in space. Tagged #donumestate #thedonumcollection #ghadaamer. Artist Instagram: @ghadaamer with 16.6K followers. Artist website: www.ghadaamer.com. Artist had an upcoming show titled AURORA at @dirimart with Istanbul opening April 9th noted on profile.
More by Ghada Amer
Spotted works by Ghada Amer
Artists in conversation

Shirazeh Houshiary
Iranian-British · b. 1955

Houshiary creates sculptures and paintings that transform Arabic and Sufi calligraphic text into abstract three dimensional forms, dissolving language into spiritual and sensory experience in ways that closely parallel Amer's hollow sphere of inward facing Arabic love poetry.

Mona Hatoum
Palestinian-British · b. 1952

Hatoum creates large hollow bronze and steel spherical and globe like sculptures with open latticework surfaces that invite the viewer to look inward, sharing Amer's strategy of making meaning contingent on the viewer's physical relationship to an enclosed geometric form.

Rachid Koraïchi
Algerian · b. 1947

Koraïchi works extensively with Arabic calligraphy and sacred signs cast into metal objects and sculptural installations, encoding love, mysticism, and desire in script based three dimensional forms that share the same material language and conceptual layering as Amer's bronze calligraphic sphere.


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