ELLEN GALLAGHER (1965 - )
Bouffant Pride.
Photogravure with die-cuts, collage, paint, Plasticine, and toy eye additions on rag paper, 2003. 331x255 mm; 13x10 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 15/20 in pencil, verso. Printed by Two Palms Press, New York. Published by Edition Schellmann, Munich and New York, for La Biennale di Venezia, 2003.Additional impressions are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.Laser-cut with plastic materials, three-dimensionally modelled and layered, Bouffant Pride is a mixed-media print composed in a grid-like structure that references a photography contact sheet. Inspired by advertisements in popular African American beauty magazines Ebony, Sepia, and Our World, Ellen Gallagher recast images that comment on mid-century Black beauty and cultural standards. The miniature portraits address the complex role hair plays in African American culture as means of personal expression and as a signifier of cultural identity and difference. Using Plasticine, toy eyeballs, paint, and ink, Gallagher exaggerated and transformed the images that once promoted aesthetic change to the magazine's reader and suggests means for personal revamping.