Ellen Gallagher, DeLuxe

Take a closer look at artist Ellen Gallagher’s DeLuxe with assistant curator Carine Harmand. DeLuxe is a grid of sixty individually-framed prints. The imagery is based on magazines dating from the 1930s to the 1970s aimed at African-American audiences, many of which feature advertisements for ‘improvements’ including wigs, hair pomades, and skin bleaching creams. Gallagher transformed these images using a variety of printing techniques, combining traditional processes of etching and lithography with recent developments in digital technology. She also made modifications by cutting and layering images and text and adding a range of materials including plasticine, glitter, gold leaf, toy eyeballs and coconut oil. Her witty and sophisticated interventions emphasize the complex construction of identity.