There is, in Tours (Indre-et-Loire), at the Contemporary Creation Center Olivier-Debré (CCCOD), an exhibition of the American artist Ghada Amer. His embroidery on canvas with pornographic motifs have become emblematic because of this diversion and the method of creation itself: an art as explicitly feminist and political as formally inventive and singular. This exhibition is not a retrospective - it would take a larger place - but a perfect introduction to the work, in two chapters, one more caressing, the other more piquant.

On the one hand, under the title "Dark Continent", is an anthology of some twenty works on canvas of the last decade, accompanied by a dozen very recent chrome brass sculptures. On the other hand, there is the Cactus Painting. Regularly arranged, 16,000 cacti make a geometric composition that, seen from above, evokes a Frank Stella of the beginnings or a Sol LeWitt. There are two types of plants, pale green cactuses standing upright, alone or in small groups, spiky; and blood-red succulents, which open their leaves. The sexual allusion is not concealed: erect phallic bushes between flower beds open vaginas. The first, Ghada Amer calls them from the rest of the "phactus". She had shown this symbolic interior garden in 2000, in Tours already, and wanted to recreate it where it had taken shape.

"Nobody wants me in France"
Which we deduce that it is quite often present in France. Error, she had not shown anything since this previous exhibition. For such an acclaimed artist, it's strange. It's even more so since she spent part of her life in Nice, another in Paris. Why this quasi-absence? Asked, the question is answered immediately: "Because nobody wants me in France.