Events
Auction
Nina Simone Childhood Home
Benefit Auction
May 12–22, 2023
This online auction is part of a multifaceted fundraiser to benefit the Nina Simone Childhood Home Preservation Project. Spearheaded by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, the project aims to fully restore and maintain the birthplace of musical icon and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Cocurated by artist Adam Pendleton and the tennis champion, entrepreneur, and arts patron Venus Williams, the auction—hosted by Sotheby’s—features work by international artists, including Ellen Gallagher, Sarah Sze, Mary Weatherford, and Stanley Whitney.
Sarah Sze, Spell, 2023 © Sarah Sze
In Conversation
Michael Armitage, Manthia Diawara, Ellen Gallagher
Moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Friday, June 17, 2022, 5pm
Hall 1 Auditorium, Messeplatz, Basel
artbasel.com
Conceived and moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Art Basel Conversations: Artists’ Influencers series brings together artists with individuals who have had a significant effect on their practices. For this program, artists Michael Armitage and Ellen Gallagher and writer and filmmaker Manthia Diawara meet to consider the development of artistic kinships. The event is free to attend in person or online at facebook.com.
Left: Michael Armitage. Photo: George Darrell © White Cube. Middle: Manthia Diawara. Right: Ellen Gallagher. Photo: Philippe Vogelenzang
Visit
Dhaka Art Summit
February 7–15, 2020
Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka
www.dhakaartsummit.org
William Forsythe and Ellen Gallagher are participating in Dhaka Art Summit 2020: Seismic Movements. Over nine days, five hundred artists, scholars, curators, and thinkers will join in panel discussions, performances, and symposia addressing the theme: “What is a movement and how do we ignite one beyond the confines of an art exhibition?” The event is free and open to the public.
Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher, Osedax, 2010 (still) © Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher
In Conversation
Ellen Gallagher, Dalilla Hermans, Melat Nigussie
Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 8pm
Wiels, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels
www.wiels.org
Ellen Gallagher will speak with writers Dalilla Hermans and Melat Nigussie in conjunction with her current exhibition at Wiels, Liquid Intelligence. The talk will be moderated by Aimée-Fidèle Mukunde. The event is free with museum admission. Register at www.wiels.org.
Installation view, Ellen Gallagher with Edgar Cleijne: Liquid Intelligence, Wiels, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, February 2–April 28, 2019. Artwork © Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher
Lecture
Oceanic Feelings in the Anthropocene
Ellen Gallagher’s Rising (Black) Atlantic
Monday, October 15, 2018, 6pm
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
www.weslyan.edu
Heather Vermeulen, a postdoctoral fellow at Wesleyan University, will speak on Ellen Gallagher’s series Watery Ecstatic (2001–) as it intervenes in scientific narratives surrounding the anthropocene. The event is free and open to the public.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic, 2018 © Ellen Gallagher
Lecture
Ellen Gallagher
Are We Obsidian?
Wednesday, October 10, 2018, 6–9pm
Art Institute of Chicago
www.artic.edu
Ellen Gallagher will speak at the Art Institute of Chicago’s thirty-first annual A. James Speyer Memorial Lecture. The event celebrates a distinguished contemporary artist who is represented in the museum’s collection and honors former museum curator James Speyer.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic, 2005 © Ellen Gallagher
Announcements
Video
Ellen Gallagher
Don’t Axe Me
Art21 interviews Ellen Gallagher on-site at her solo exhibition Don’t Axe Me at the New Museum in New York, June 19–September 15, 2013, as she discusses the content and materiality of the exhibited works.
Video
Ellen Gallagher
Osedax
Ellen Gallagher discusses Osedax, a large-scale installation named after the bone-eating worm discovered off the coast of Monterey, California. This piece was on view at the New Museum in New York as part of her solo exhibition Don’t Axe Me, June 19–September 15, 2013.
Museum Exhibitions
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Going Dark
The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility
October 20, 2023–April 7, 2024
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org
Going Dark presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, thus positioning them at the “edge of visibility”—a formal strategy that the participating artists use to explore tensions in contemporary society. Occupying the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda, the exhibition includes more than a hundred works by twenty-eight artists, the majority of whom are Black and more than half of whom are women. Work by Ellen Gallagher and Titus Kaphar is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, 2002 © Ellen Gallagher
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Ellen Gallagher
All of No Man’s Land Is Ours
December 2, 2023–March 10, 2024
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
www.stedelijk.nl
All of No Man’s Land Is Ours is Ellen Gallagher’s first solo exhibition in Amsterdam. The installation reflects the diversity of the artist’s practice in which painting, cut and carved rubber, crumpled notebook papers, and metal beaten to an airy thinness intertwine in a dynamic relationship.
Installation view, Ellen Gallagher: All of No Man’s Land Is Ours, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, December 2, 2023–March 10, 2024. Artwork © Ellen Gallagher. Photo: Peter Tijhuis
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Ellen Gallagher in
In the Black Fantastic
November 19, 2022–April 10, 2023
Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands
www.kunsthal.nl
In the Black Fantastic explores the work of eleven contemporary artists from the African diaspora who draw on science fiction, myth, and Afrofuturism to question our knowledge of the world. In this exhibition, which includes painting, photography, video, sculpture, and mixed-media installations, fantasy becomes a zone of creative and cultural liberation and a means of addressing racism and social injustice by conjuring new ways of being in the world. This exhibition has traveled from the Hayward Gallery in London. Work by Ellen Gallagher is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic, 2021 © Ellen Gallagher
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Ellen Gallagher in
Les Portes du Possible: Art & Science-Fiction
November 5, 2022–April 10, 2023
Centre Pompidou-Metz, France
www.centrepompidou-metz.fr
This exhibition, whose title translates to A Gateway to Possible Worlds: Art & Science Fiction, brings together more than two hundred works from the late 1960s to the present day. Art and science fiction whisk visitors away to a sci-fi realm that spotlights the bonds between imaginary worlds and reality with the help of artists, authors, architects, and film directors. Both fields build on the demands for twenty-first-century utopias to spark debate, inspiration, and hope. Work by Ellen Gallagher is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic, 2007 © Ellen Gallagher
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Whitney Biennial 2022
Quiet as It’s Kept
April 6–October 16, 2022
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
whitney.org
The Whitney Biennial was established in 1932 by the museum’s founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, to chart developments in art in the United States. The 2022 Biennial presents dynamic selections that take different forms over the course of the exhibition: artworks—even walls—change, and performance animates the galleries and objects. With an intergenerational and interdisciplinary roster of sixty-three artists and collectives at all points in their careers, many of whom work with an interdisciplinary perspective, the Biennial surveys and presents the art and ideas of our time. Work by Harold Ancart, Ellen Gallagher, Cy Gavin, and Rick Lowe is included.
Harold Ancart, The Guiding Light, 2021, installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York © Harold Ancart. Photo: Ryan Lowry
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Ellen Gallagher in
In the Black Fantastic
June 29–September 18, 2022
Hayward Gallery, London
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
In the Black Fantastic explores the work of eleven contemporary artists from the African diaspora who draw on science fiction, myth, and Afrofuturism to question our knowledge of the world. In this exhibition, which includes painting, photography, video, sculpture, and mixed-media installations, fantasy becomes a zone of creative and cultural liberation and a means of addressing racism and social injustice by conjuring new ways of being in the world. Work by Ellen Gallagher is included.
Installation view, In the Black Fantastic, Hayward Gallery, London, June 29–September 18, 2022. Artwork © Ellen Gallagher
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Ellen Gallagher with Edgar Cleijne
A Law. . . A Blueprint. . . A Scale
April 14–September 11, 2022
Centro Botín, Santander, Spain
www.centrobotin.org
Spanning two decades of Ellen Gallagher’s career, A Law. . . A Blueprint. . . A Scale includes paintings, works on paper, and three film installations created in collaboration with Edgar Cleijne. The exhibition invites visitors to submerge themselves under the ocean’s skin through an immersive itinerary that explores issues of race, identity, and transformation, with reference to themes such as Modernist abstraction and marine biology.
Installation view, Ellen Gallagher with Edgar Cleijne: A Law. . . A Blueprint. . . A Scale, Centro Botín, Santander, Spain, April 14–September 11, 2022. Artwork © Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher
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Ellen Gallagher in
To Be Like Water
December 17, 2021–May 22, 2022
TENT Rotterdam, Netherlands
www.tentrotterdam.nl
To Be Like Water explores and expands on the meaning of code-switching—a term used in linguistics to denote the practice of alternating between multiple languages in conversation—which now also commonly refers to adjusting one’s behaviors to optimize the comfort of others. The exhibition aims to examine and complicate the notion of identity, and consider code-switching as a manifestation of a fluid multiplicity that operates within vectors of power. Work by Ellen Gallagher is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic, 2019, installation view, TENT Rotterdam, Netherlands © Ellen Gallagher. Photo: Aad Hoogendoorn
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Icons
May 6–November 14, 2021
Boghossian Foundation, Brussels
www.villaempain.com
From early European and Middle Eastern artifacts to modern and contemporary works, icons have inspired many believers, as well as artists, throughout the ages. This exhibition explores how spiritual dimensions have been incorporated into artworks from antiquity to the present day. Work by Michael Craig-Martin, Ellen Gallagher, Douglas Gordon, Duane Hanson, Titus Kaphar, and Andy Warhol is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Untitled, 2000 © Ellen Gallagher
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Invisible Sun
May 26–October 3, 2021
The Broad, Los Angeles
www.thebroad.org
Developed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the groundswell of demands for social justice and racial equity, Invisible Sun features artworks that resonate with this unprecedented period of rupture and unrest. The works on view speak to profound transitions, both personal and global—including the AIDS crisis, gender- and race-based violence, unchecked capitalism, and colonialism’s aftermath—and form an appeal for healing. Work by Ellen Gallagher and Nathaniel Mary Quinn is included.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, C’mo’ and Walk with Me, 2019 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn
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Ellen Gallagher in
Sonsbeek20→24: Force Times Distance
July 2–August 29, 2021
Various locations in Arnhem, Netherlands
www.sonsbeek20-24.org
The twelfth edition of the Sonsbeek exhibition, Sonsbeek20→24: Force Times Distance, centers on the topic of labor and its sonic ecologies. Examining labor relations through sound, oral stories, and music, it asks questions about how value is produced, what is seen, and who is heard. The exhibition includes more than 250 contributions installed in more than a dozen different locations across Arnhem, Netherlands, including airplane hangers, churches, and barbershops, expanding concepts of public space and public art. Work by Ellen Gallagher is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Watery Ecstatic (RA 18h 35m 37.73s D37° 22' 31.12'), 2017 © Ellen Gallagher
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Ellen Gallagher in
Beyond Infinity: Contemporary Art after Kusama
September 24, 2019–July 18, 2021
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
www.icaboston.org
This exhibition provides visitors with a deeper understanding of how the immersive environment of Yayoi Kusama’s LOVE IS CALLING (2013) embodies the artist’s long-standing exploration of accumulation, repetition, luminescence, life and death, and happenings. Works featuring Kusama’s obsessive repetition of symbols, patterns, and forms are paired with works by contemporaries as well as those by current practitioners such as Ellen Gallagher.
Ellen Gallagher, Untitled, 1995 © Ellen Gallagher