Ellen Gallagher is one of the most remarkable artists working today. In his work he bridges the gap between organic iconography based on microbiological forms from oceanography and racialised icons and symbols.
He reinterprets both everyday images and black pop culture idols while reveling in American history and culture. With his poetic and playful vocabulary, he explores North American stories and tragedies that are also very topical in the current European debates on decolonization, emphasizing an ecological awareness of human existence. Gallagher develops surreal iconographies portraying the mythical worlds of Afrofuturism with artist Sun Ra's legacy of underwater lifeforms and the Black Atlantic and Middle Passage, the slave route across the Atlantic Ocean.
Gallagher's collaboration with Dutch photographer and filmmaker Edgar Cleijne connects them in a reflection on the transformation of landscapes and worlds. Together they have created two cinematic installations: the Osedax, based on “falling whales” – the scientific term for dead whales that have fallen to the ocean floor and been consumed by scavengers -, and the more recent Highway Gothic, a meditation on the ecological and cultural implications of Interstate 10 as it crosses the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans. Both evoke hypnotic and enchanting worlds populated by microorganisms and underwater life forms and the mythical stories of the African diaspora.
Curator: Dirk Snauwaert
Cover image: Edgar Cleijne & Ellen Gallagher, detail of Highway Gothic, 2017. 16 mm film still. WIELS, 2019
