Ellen Gallagher, Resident Artist Lecture 2005

Ellen Gallagher gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking abut her interdisciplinary practice spanning painting, printmaking, drawing, film, and animation. Gallagher references themes of modernism, black expressivity, speculative fiction, and nostalgia. Gallagher’s oeuvre draws upon many motifs and symbols: the nurse as a recurring character/trickster figure, viewing race as a texture which can be felt, turning fetishes into signs, origin myths, the post black beauty body, ghosts, archival material and print culture to name a few. Scale plays an important role in Gallagher’s work, particularly her use of using computers to create digital files that can constrict and become expansive. Gallagher seeks to make work that allow for these multiple meanings to be built through resonances and dissonances which allow for an infinite layering to how she approaches identity.