During her artistic studies in Nice, France during her youth, Ghada Amer (b. 1963, Cairo, Egypt) was routinely turned away from painting classes as they were reserved exclusively for men at that time. This experience convinced Amer that gender was prescribed even in art making. This facet of her training had an indelible impact on her practice and, by the early 1990s, Amer, seeking subversion, had developed her own visual language of taking thread to canvas rather than paint, as embroidery constituted women’s work in the domestic domain. "Portrait of a Girl on White – RFGA" is from her body of sewn text portraits in which the artist uses quotes from literature or popular figures to communicate women’s empowerment. The lettering in this work spells out: “I am just a person trapped in a woman’s body.”