Ellie Ga ’98
Class of 1998, Major in Studio Art
Ellie Ga '98 performing Reading the Deck of Tara at Les Abattoirs Center for Contemporary Art in Toulouse, France.
MMC alumna Ellie Ga ’98, an MMC Studio Art major and now an internationally recognized artist, was one of just 75 artists selected to exhibit in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, the country’s most important and longest-running showcase of contemporary art.
Taking place every two years since 1973, the Whitney Biennial highlights work in painting, sculpture, installation, film and video, photography, performance, and sound. The 2019 exhibition ran from May 17 through September 22 and featured Ga’s video installation, titled Gyres 1–3, which explores the form of a gyre, a spiraling current on the ocean’s surface that circulates debris and throws it ashore. Ga’s narration interweaves seemingly disparate accounts and retellings, blending history, research, and autobiography.
Ga also performed her narrative-based work, The Fortunetellers, in July at the Whitney, featuring stories, memories, sketches, videos, and more from her five-month expedition near the North Pole.
At MMC, Ga spent much of her time in the art department, designing her own independent study courses and connecting her artistic life in NYC to her studies and full time work. During her sophomore year, Ga received a fellowship through the Hermitage Museum Foundation to spend several weeks in St. Petersburg and Moscow, her first time traveling outside of the United States.
After MMC, Ga went on to earn her MFA from Hunter College and now works in the intersections of performance, photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Her work is in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, FRAC Franche-Comté, The Fluentum Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Foundation Galeries Lafayette, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions at leading New York institutions and across Europe and has presented performance works at The Playground Festival in Leuven, Belgium; The Kitchen in New York; Le Consortium in Dijon, France; and the Fondation Cartier in Paris, France. Her Eureka, A Lighthouse Play, developed with the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in 2014, has been presented at the Guggenheim Museum, EMPAC, and The Kitchen.
This feature was originally included in the Fall 2019 edition of MMC Magazine.
Class Year and Major
Class of 1998, Major in Studio Art
Testimonial
MMC alumna Ellie Ga ’98, an MMC Studio Art major and now an internationally recognized artist, was one of just 75 artists selected to exhibit in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, the country’s most important and longest-running showcase of contemporary art.
