Ellen Gallagher
Some of her pieces refer to issues of race, and may combine formality with racial stereotypes and depict "ordering principles" society imposes.
Referred to as African American,[3] she is of biracial ethnicity; her father's heritage was from Cape Verde, in Western Africa (but he was born in the United States), and her mother's background was Caucasian Irish Catholic.
[5] In Rhode Island, Gallagher attended Moses Brown, an elite, Quaker college preparatory school.
[7] As her first solo show in New York, Gallagher chose Mary Boone's space because of its neutrality, in which she stated, "because there the abstract qualities of my work stand out first".
[8] Some of Gallagher's work involves repetitively modifying advertising found in African American focused publications such as Ebony, Sepia, and Our World, including images from Valmor Products ads, as in her DeLuxe series.
[11] Each of these works contains as many as or more than 60 prints employing techniques of photogravure, spit-bite, collage, cutting, scratching, silkscreen, offset lithography and hand-building.
[13][14] With stylized allusions to cartoons and childhood toys or via transformed and manipulated advertisements Gallagher's work “seduces the viewer into visceral engagement with images about which we have learned to feel numb.
Very contrasting styles combined to give life to meticulously unique Pop-abstract-minimalist artworks[15][16] Some of Gallagher's early influences while attending the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston were the Darkroom Collective, a group of poets living and working out of Inman Square in Cambridge, MA[17] and would go on to become the art coordinator of the collective.
Gallagher made Wiglette from Deluxe 2004 to 2005, which contains a collection of vintage beauty ads from the 1930s to 70s intended for black American women.
[22] She combines formality (grid lines, ruled paper) with the racial stereotypes to depict the "ordering principles" society imposes.
Disembodied eyes and lips float, hostage, in the electric black of the minstrel stage, distorting the African body into American blackface.
"[24] As well as using racially charged imagery, Gallagher is known to portray bodies and include elements of poetry and pop culture in her work.
Her extensive ongoing series begun in 2001 and titled, Watery Ecstatic, consists of paintings, sculptural objects, and animations to depict sea life through Afrofuturist aesthetics.
[29] Gallagher commented upon the process of creating these pieces: "The way that these drawings are made is my version of scrimshaw, the carving into bone that sailors did when they were out whaling.
[8] Her choice of penmanship paper is significant, in an interview with Jessica Morgan, she says "the sense of a neutral surface that can accommodate any mark seems an ideal way of communicating freedom,"[31] which is described by her as "idiosyncratic" and "inscrutable".
