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Ellie Ga
Ellie Ga (born 1976, New York City) is an American artist, writer and performer. Ga produces narratives in the form of video installations, performances and artist’s books. She is a Guggenheim 2022 Fellow in film and video.

From 2007-2009 she was a part of the Tara expedition drifting through the Arctic pack ice. Based on the expedition Ga produced a series of works called The Fortunetellers. Among the works in the series are the performances The Fortunetellers and Reading the Deck of Tara.

Introducing Ga's work in a 2018 interview, Anna Della Subin writes: "Ellie Ga is an artist of the intrepid. Charting a course from Patagonia to the North Pole, she voyages through histories, mythologies and languages, navigating the role of the artist on a precarious planet. Her points of latitude are chance meetings, accidents and coincidences."

In 2011, Ga studied marine archeology at University of Alexandria’s Centre Maritime Archaeology and Underwater Cultural Heritage in Alexandria Egypt. This was the basis for a series of videos and performances about the submerged ruins of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria. Including the video installations Four Thousand Blocks and Measuring the Circle, and the performance Eureka, A Lighthouse Play produced by the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in 2014.

From 2014-2017 Ga was the recipient of a fellowship from the Swedish Research Council. Initially her research project was centered on ocean drift and more specifically the narratives and history of the message in a bottle. The project developed into the video installation Strophe, A Turning.

In an introduction to Ga, and Strophe, A Turning, The Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg writes: "...her own willingness to drift and follow uncertain turns carries her unexpectedly to the Greek islands of Symi and Lesvos, during the summer of 2015. Ga decides to join a team of volunteers aiding asylum seekers and refugees—a definitive turning point at which she is forced to wrestle not only with the poetics of accidental drift and the new discoveries it beckons, but with urgent political and humanitarian realities." (*add cite from världskulturmuseet source.)

Ga’s writing is closely tied to her performative practice. In an essay on Ellie Ga's work, Lauren O'Neill-Butler writes, "her lyrical essays—her voiceovers and written texts—are as equally concerned with humans as they are with the lives, histories, and migrations of objects, particularly the lost meaning of symbols."

She is a founding editor of Ugly Duckling Presse. In 2018, she worked with Siglio Press to produce the book Square Octagon Circle.

Ellie Ga will be exhibiting in the 2019 edition of The Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Selected works
Quarries - 2022 (single channel video installation)

Strophe, A Turning - 2017 (2 channel video installation)

Eureka, A Lighthouse Play - 2015 (performance)

Four Thousand Blocks - 2014 (3 channel video installation)

Measuring the Circle - 2014 (video)

The Fortunetellers - 2011 (performance)

Selected writings
Square Octagon Circle, Siglio Press, 2018 (ISBN 978-1-938221-18-7)

North Was Here, Ugly Ducking Presse, 2018 (ISBN 978-1-946433-14-5)

Dialogue (with Marcelline Delbecq), 2018 Shelter Press (ISBN 978-2-36582-021-9)

Three Arctic Booklets, Ugly Duckling Presse (limited edition), June 7, 2010.

Classification of A Spit Stain, Ugly Duckling Presse, February 15, 2009 (ISBN 978-1-933254-45-6).