Article
Newsletter: Spring /Summer 2003
In Ariforum, critic Frances Richard writes, "Slyly lovely and perversely indirect, Ellen Gallagher's work concerns inscription and sign systems and addresses the fragmentations and provocations of racialized identity." In Blubber the expansive canvas is destabilized by diffuse and oblique references to minstrel show stereo types such as exaggerated eyes, lips, and wigs. These cliched images serve as grammatical punctuation marks for the children's penmanship paper she employs as a metaphor for the infantilized language of the minstrel show. By decontextualizing and reproducing these images, Gallagher aims to release them from their encoded meaning and initiate a new visual vocabulary on issues of race. The title of the work suggests allusions to Melville's chapter on "The Whiteness of the Whale" in Moby Dick and to Judy Blume's Blubber, a novel of female adolescent torment, as well as to uncontrolled acts of weeping or "blubbering." [Former] Director Susan M. Taylor describes Gallagher's work as having "a quiet power that merges traditional abstraction with social commentary."
