Ellie Ga

Last updated
Ellie Ga
Born1976 (age 4849)
New York
NationalityAmerican
Education
  • Hunter College, New York,
  • Marymount Manhattan College
Known forMultidisciplinary Art (video, performance)
Website elliega.info

Ellie Ga (born 1976 in New York City) is an American artist, writer and performer. [1] Ga produces narratives in the form of video installations, performances and artist's books. [2] She is a Guggenheim 2022 Fellow in film and video. [3] She received an MFA from the Hunter College in New York, NY and a BA from Marymount Manhattan College, NY. [1] Ga is represented by Bureau, New York. [4] She lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. [4]

Contents

Work

Introducing Ga's work in a 2018 interview, Anna Della Subin writes: "Ellie Ga is an artist of the intrepid. Charting a course from Patagonia to the North Pole, she voyages through histories, mythologies and languages, navigating the role of the artist on a precarious planet. Her points of latitude are chance meetings, accidents and coincidences." [5]

Ga's writing is closely tied to her performative practice. [6] In an essay on Ellie Ga's work, Lauren O'Neill-Butler writes, "her lyrical essays—her voiceovers and written texts—are as equally concerned with humans as they are with the lives, histories, and migrations of objects, particularly the lost meaning of symbols." [7]

She is a founding editor of Ugly Duckling Presse. [8] In 2018, she worked with Siglio Press to produce the book Square Octagon Circle. [9] Max L. Feldman, in a 2018 Hyperallergic review of Square Octagon Circle, described her working process as similar to that of a "conceptual archaeologist." [9]

Of the artist, critic Jennifer Kabat wrote for Frieze, "Ellie Ga's essays – which manifest as performances and installations – guide you on expeditions to the Arctic or through Egypt searching for the first lighthouse." [10]

Ga's work Gyres 1-3 premiered in the 2019 edition of the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. [11]

The Fortunetellers

From 2007 to 2009 Ga was a part of the Tara expedition drifting through the Arctic pack ice. [12] Based on the expedition Ga produced a series of works called The Fortunetellers. Among the works in the series are the performances The Fortunetellers and Reading the Deck of Tara. [13] The Tara is a sailboat designed to withstand the pressure of the polar ice cap. [14] Stuck, with little ability to communicate with the outside world, the near constant darkness weighed upon the boat's passengers. Ga, in her account of their eventual release from the ice, describes seeing light for the first time: "At that moment," she writes in the Square Octagon Circle, "a lighthouse blinking in the distance became a symbol for our anxieties about the future: it marked our return to civilization." [15] The series included performances, installations and videos, and was shown at The New Museum in February 2013. [16] Ga was selected to be a member of the Tara expedition based on her eighteen month residency at the New York Explorers Club where she began exploring incomplete paper trails and documentation related to historical explorations. [17]

Square Octagon Circle

Square Octagon Circle is a 14-piece multimedia project and book. The purpose of the project is to determine what the Lighthouse of Alexandria looked like. The lighthouse is one of the lost seven wonders of the world. [9]

In 2011, Ga studied marine archeology at the University of Alexandria's Centre for Maritime Archaeology and Underwater Cultural Heritage in Alexandria Egypt. [17] This was the basis for a series of videos and performances about the submerged ruins of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria, including the video installations Four Thousand Blocks and Measuring the Circle, [10] and the performance Eureka, A Lighthouse Play produced by the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in 2014. [18] A comprehensive exhibition of the works in Square Octagon Circle was shown at Le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire in 2015. [19]

Strophe, A Turning

From 2014-2017 Ga was the recipient of a fellowship from the Swedish Research Council. [20] Initially her research project was centered on ocean drift and more specifically the narratives and history of the message in a bottle. [21] The project developed into the video installation Strophe, A Turning. [22]

In their presentation text of Strophe, A Turning for the 2018 edition of the Clandestino Festival, the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg writes: "...her own willingness to drift and follow uncertain turns carries her unexpectedly to the Greek islands of Symi and Lesvos, during the summer of 2015. Ga decides to join a team of volunteers aiding asylum seekers and refugees—a definitive turning point at which she is forced to wrestle not only with the poetics of accidental drift and the new discoveries it beckons, but with urgent political and humanitarian realities." [23]

Gyres

Gyres, is a single channel video installation that premiered at the 2019 Whitney Biennial. [11] [24] The installation consists of Gyres 1-3, a triptych of short videos. [25] Ga's voice-over narrates as collected images are arranged and re-arranged on a light box surface, weaving together experiences of loss and grief, the transient nature and meaning of personal items displaced by disasters. [26]

Presenting Gyres 1-3, The Whitney Museum writes: "Ga's narration interweaves seemingly disparate accounts and retellings, blending history, research, and autobiography. She encounters beachcombers who gather the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami in Japan; an oceanographer who studies the debris from container spills; and the histories of resistance, migration, and ritual offerings on the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea." [11]

Quarries

Quarries is a single channel video installation that premiered in 2022 at Jeu de Paume, Paris in the exhibition Fata Morgana. [27]

Quarries follows the mysteries surrounding prehistoric stone tools from Kenya alongside the neglected labor of stonemasons who paved the streets of Lisbon. The humble gesture of these artisans, stooped over the pavement, morphs into a confrontation with the hubristic act of monument building. For the artist's brother, the struggle to regain the use of his hands after a serious injury transforms into a narrative about agency in the face of being forgotten, marginalized and deemed of no importance. An out-of-print photography book on Portuguese stone pavements leads to a series of improbable connections. A tour of a neurobiology lab leads to an examination of a Cold War re-education camp where prisoners were forced to dig up stones to create replicas of antiquity while covertly drawing on stone shards to mark and then bury a trace of their stories. In Quarries, Ga extracts stories of resistance from unlikely places and on overlooked surfaces. [27]

In a The New Yorker review of the work, Johanna Fateman writes how Quarries: "...relays a winding account of such seemingly unrelated subjects as Ga's brother's paralysis, the discovery of ancient stone tools, and the neuroscience of insects. Across a three-channel projection, a pair of hands arrange objects and images on a light table, moving them from the center to the margins, and then offscreen. The triptych concludes with a fascinating history of Portuguese calçada , a near-extinct street-paving technique with a complex legacy - the labor was often performed by prisoners - that produced dizzying mosaics from irregularly shaped fragments of basalt and limestone." [28]

Quarries was screened at FIDMarseille in its 2022 Official Selection. [29]

Selected writings

Collections

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Artist - Ellie Ga". Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum . Archived from the original on 18 September 2025. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Exhibitions - Ellie Ga: It Was Restored Again". Albright-Knox Art Gallery . 2014. Archived from the original on 25 September 2024. Retrieved 18 September 2025.
  3. "Fellows: Ellie Ga". Guggenheim Fellowship . Archived from the original on 6 June 2024. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Artists - Ellie Ga - Works". Bureau-inc.com. Archived from the original on 18 September 2025. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
  5. Della Subin, Anna (2018). "In Praise of Drift". Tank . No. 77. Retrieved 18 September 2025.
  6. Weinstein, Tresca (6 May 2015). "Artist Ellie Ga brings "live essays" to EMPAC stage". Times Union . Archived from the original on 1 January 2018. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
  7. O'Neill-Butler, Lauren (27 July 2013). "Grand Arts Announces Exhibition by: Ellie Ga - Square, Octagon, Circle". Grand Arts . Archived from the original on 2 December 2022. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
  8. "Ugly Duckling Presse - History". Ugly Duckling Presse . Archived from the original on 26 July 2018. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
  9. 1 2 3 Feldman, Max L. (18 November 2018). "Ellie Ga's Empire of Texts". Hyperallergic . Archived from the original on 30 September 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  10. 1 2 Kabat, Jennifer (24 September 2015). "In Focus: Ellie Ga". Frieze . No. 174. Archived from the original on 11 February 2025. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  11. 1 2 3 "Exhibitions - Whitney Biennial 2019 - Art & Artists - Ellie Ga". Whitney Museum of American Art . 2019. Archived from the original on 18 August 2025. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  12. "Artists: Ellie Ga". Tara expedition . Archived from the original on 22 June 2021. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
  13. O'Neill-Butler, Lauren (March 2011). "Lauren O'Neill-Butler on Ellie Ga". Artforum . 49 (7): 270. ProQuest   857448335. Archived from the original on 5 June 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  14. "Tara Arctic - The mission". Tara expedition . Archived from the original on 14 February 2007. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
  15. 1 2 "Titles: Square Octagon Circle". Siglio Press. 2018. Archived from the original on 25 June 2024. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
  16. "Exhibitions: Walking Drifting Dragging". New Museum . 2013. Archived from the original on 21 September 2025. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
  17. 1 2 Hunt, Will (5 April 2014). "Submerged Ruins: An Interview with Visual Artist Ellie Ga". The American Reader. Archived from the original on 22 January 2022. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  18. "Events: Eureka, a lighthouse play". Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center . 2015. Archived from the original on 16 July 2025. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
  19. Prouteau, Eva (2015). "Expositions: Ellie Ga - Carré Octogone Cercle" [Expositions: Ellie Ga - Square Octagon Circle]. Le Grand Café - Contemporary Art Center, Saint-Nazaire. Archived from the original on 8 August 2025. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
  20. "Application: Message in a Bottle: Operation and Discovery". Swedish Research Council . 2013. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  21. A. Kramer, Kaitlyn (October 2017). "Ellie Ga: Strophe, A Turning". The Brooklyn Rail . Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  22. "The Film Club spring 2018 > Strophe, a Turning (2017) - Ellie Ga". Moderna Museet . 2018. Archived from the original on 12 July 2024. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
  23. Lee, Mara (2018). "Clandestino Festival - Filmvisning & Samtal: Strophe, a Turning" [Clandestino Festival - Film Screening and Conversation: Strophe, a Turning]. Världskultur Museerna (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
  24. "Exhibitions: Ellie Ga - Gyres 2019". Bureau-inc.com. 2019. Archived from the original on 27 October 2019. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  25. Cotter, Holland (16 May 2019). "The Whitney Biennial: Young Art Cross-Stitched With Politics" . The New York Times (published 17 May 2019). pp. C.13. ProQuest   2226310915. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  26. Aldridge, Taylor Renee (19 September 2019). "'We Ourselves Are Our Prize': Lasting Works in the Whitney Biennial Evoke Toni Morrison and Ancestry Through the Ages". ARTnews . Archived from the original on 27 March 2024. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  27. 1 2 "Exhibitions: Quarries". Bureau-inc.com. 2022. Archived from the original on 28 March 2025. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  28. Fateman, Johanna (17 June 2022). "Art: Ellie Ga". The New Yorker (published 27 June 2022). Archived from the original on 25 June 2022. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  29. Neyrat, Cyril (2022). "Film: Querries". FIDMarseille . Archived from the original on 9 December 2022. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  30. Mohl, Rachel G. (30 April 2010). "Review: Classification of a Spit Stain by Ellie Ga". Make Literary Productions. Archived from the original on 22 September 2025. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  31. Ga, Ellie (2008). Classification of a Spit Stain. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse. ISBN   9781933254456. OCLC   318457377.
  32. Youngblood, Megan (Fall 2010). "Arctic Adventure: Ellie Ga '00 Retraces The Tara's North Pole Expedition through Memory and Fortunetelling" (PDF). Marymount Manhattan Magazine (Fall 2010–2011). Marymount Manhattan College: 16–20. Archived (PDF) from the original on 21 December 2015. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  33. Ga, Ellie (2010). Three Arctic booklets. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse. OCLC   651998033.
  34. Delbecq, Marcelline; Ga, Ellie (2017). Dialogue. Shelter Press. ISBN   978-2-36582-021-9. OCLC   1004821600.
  35. Beaman, Katherine (30 December 2018). "North Was Here by Ellie Ga: To Draw Maps". Commonplace Review. Archived from the original on 2 May 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  36. Ga, Ellie (2018). North Was Here. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse. ISBN   9781946433145. OCLC   1028847092.
  37. Norman, Lee Ann (October 2018). "Ellie Ga's Square Octagon Circle". The Brooklyn Rail . Archived from the original on 30 April 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2025.
  38. Ga, Ellie (2018). Square Octagon Circle. New York: Siglio. ISBN   9781938221187. OCLC   1006618558.
  39. "Collection: Measuring the Circle, Ellie Ga, 2013-2014". Fluentum. 2013. Archived from the original on 10 August 2025. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  40. "Artist of the Collection: Ellie Ga". Lafayette Anticipations – Fondation Galeries Lafayette. Archived from the original on 27 March 2025. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  41. "Artist: Ellie Ga". Frac Franche-Comté, La Collection. Archived from the original on 22 September 2025. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  42. "Exhibitions: Honey, I—". Hessel Museum of Art - Center for Curatorial Studies . 2014. Archived from the original on 13 June 2025. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  43. "Upplev konsten > Nyförvärv > Strophe, A Turning av Ellie Ga" [Experience the art > New acquisitions > Strophe, A Turning by Ellie Ga]. Statens konstråd (Public Art Agency) (in Swedish). 2021. Archived from the original on 14 August 2025. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  44. "Collection - Works - Ellie Ga | Gyres 1-3". Whitney Museum of American Art . 2019. Archived from the original on 18 August 2025. Retrieved 20 June 2021.