Ellie Ga at Bryn Mawr College

A collaboration between Special Collections and the Center for Visual Culture brings artist Ellie Ga to campus for a residency during the 2022-23 academic year. Postponed by COVID, we have been getting to know one another virtually through a series of co-sponsored events and an exhibition on the 2nd Floor of Canaday Library.

Transparent photographs of stones overlaying one another

Artist in Residence (2021-2023)

Ellie Ga, "Quarries"

2022, Single channel video and sound, 40 minutes

Screening at Bryn Mawr Film Institute, Sunday, December 4, 11am
Q&A with artist to follow

Learn more

Artist in Residence (2021-23)

Ellie Ga, "Strophe, A Turning"

2017, 2 channel video, loop, 37:00

Link to Screening and Conversation

Artist in Residence (2021-23)

Ellie Ga, "Sayed"

From series Square, Octagon, Circle (2012-2014) video and sound (in Arabic with English subtitles), 05:24

View "Sayed"

Events

Summer 2020	recorded	Conversation with Gallerist Gabrielle Giattino
ongoing	available to view	Screening of Sayed from series Square, Circle, Octagon (2012-2014) single-channel video, 5 min. 24 sec.
March 10, 2021 12:30 - 2pm	recorded conversation	Strophe: A Screening and Studio Visit with Ellie Ga Conversation to follow: Exploring Themes of History and Memory with Madhavi Kale and Lisa Saltzman
April 16, 2021 12noon - 1pm	recorded conversation	Women in Archaeology at BMC Conversation between Ellie Ga and Camilla MacKay
May 4, 2021 12:30 - 2pm	recorded conversation	Teach-In: Legacies of Colonialism in the Mineral Collections of BMC Conversation between Ellie Ga and Selby Cull Hearth, facilitated by Special Collections staff
October 18, 2021 - December 16, 2022	Exhibition in 2nd Floor Coombe Suite, Canaday Library	Introducing Ellie Ga Features recent acquisitions of artwork and artist's books by Ellie Ga, as well as selections from Special Collections discussed in our (virtual) conversation series
November 5, 2021 12noon - 1pm	Curators' Tour in 2nd Floor Coombe Suite, Canaday Library	Introducing Ellie Ga, Friday Finds Event
December 4, 2022 11am - 1pm	Screening at Bryn Mawr Film Institute	Quarries single-channel video, 40 min. An out-of-print photography book on Portuguese stone pavements leads to a series of improbable connections.

Ellie Ga (b. 1976) is an American artist living in Sweden. Her work is included in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Bard College. Her recent work, Gyres 1-3 (2019), was a commission for the Whitney Biennial and was reviewed in The New York Times and Artnews. Art historian Tom McDonough (SUNY-Binghamton) wrote about it for the fall 2019 issue of Osmos Magazine.

Ga works between memoir, travelogue, and visual essay connecting ideas and presenting them as multichannel videos or performances with live narration. Gyres 1-3 (2019) looks at water as the site of political exile, religious pilgrimage, and forced migration across the Aegean Sea. Her working process is a kind of “beach-combing” that embraces chance encounter with artifacts and how they find their way to her. It involves extended periods of research, including conversations with people in roles, such as museum directors, scholars, Arctic explorers. Her interests are interdisciplinary and cross-temporal. She speaks of her work as a collection of chance encounters, what is lost (and accrued) in translating between spoken and written words, and archaeological discovery.

In November and December of 2022, Ga will be in residence at Bryn Mawr College, "combing" Special Collections in the process of producing a new work of art, commissioned for the College.

Contacts: Matt Feliz [mfeliz] (Center for Visual Culture)
and Carrie Robbins [cmrobbins] (Special Collections)

Read related blog post

See books by Ellie Ga, acquired for Special Collections.