Ellen Gallagher, Artist, b. USA 1965

"The artist "whites out" such features as lips, hair, or wigs with yellow plastacine. These then stand out from the surface as a kind of sculptural relief, lovingly formed elements that read as a voluptuous ornamentation. They accentuate precisely the racial attributes the products were intended to diminish. The malleable putty is striated and carved in ways that recall African tribal art, although that's not the exclusive cultural reference." From article.com. Link here.

"I scan pages from advertisements about control: acne, unruly hair, corns, bunions, and asthma. These all have particular class connotations, and I remember hearing, as a child, that you got asthma from cockroaches, from enclosed spaces. Constriction is interesting to me as the loss of control of something as elemental as your breath. Corns and bunions have something specific about them too, something so black, that is funny to me. But they have a specificity that is not about race but rather about skin and about being on your feet all the time. Just like the ads have their own material history, plasticine was used for stop-action animation to suggest motion and also to make models. These structures are built out of whimsy but are also very tectonic." From Ellen Gallagher Talks. Link here.

From db artmag. Link here.