ELLEN GALLAGHER (B. 1965)

"Blackface minstrel is a ghost story. It's about loss; there's a black mask and sublimation...[B]lackface minstrel was the first great American abstraction, even before jazz. It's the literal recording of the African body into American public culture. Disembodied eyes and lips float, hostage, in the electric black of the minstrel stage, distorting the African body into American blackface."
—Ellen Gallagher, "History and Drag: Ellen Gallagher in Conversation with Cheryl Kaplan," DB-Artmag, 2006 (online).