In art school, Ghada Amer found out a truth that would later become the pulse of her artistic rebellion. The realization shaped her life’s work and inspired her to begin embroidering, using thread as her medium of painting. Thread and needles are my brush,” Amer wrote. As a child, Amer would go with her mother to buy patterns and materials to make clothes. By rendering explicit scenes in delicate thread, she anonymized the figures and transformed their representation, giving them a new identity.