Ellen Gallagher

Bio: Ellen Gallagher was born in Rhode Island in 1965 and now lives in New York. Her education came from Oberlin College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her artwork is influenced by "advertisements that she appropriated from [the] popular magazines like "Ebony", "Our World", and "Sepia".

"I’ve collected archival material from black photo journals from 1939 to 1972, looking at magazines like "Our World," "Sepia," and "Ebony." Initially I was attracted to the magazines because the wig advertisements had a grid-like structure that interested me. But as I began looking through them, the wig ads themselves had such a language to them—so worldly—that referred to other countries, La Sheba...this sort of lost past. I started collecting the wig ads themselves. And then I realized that I also had a kind of longing for the other stories, the narratives, wanting to bring them back into the paintings and wanting the paintings to function through the characters of the ads—to function as a kind of chart or a map of this lost world..."- Ellen Gallagher

Connection to social Justice: I choose this artist because of her statements about advertisements in connection to people around the world. I also believe she is a good example after reading her quote from an interview with ART 21, a series by PBS.

Art21 (2001-2010). Ellen Gallager. Art 21 Series. Retrieved September 6, 2011 from the World Wide Web: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/gallagher/clip1.html