Artist Research. Ellen Gallagher, Mikhail Karikis

1. Ellen Gallagher

Born: 1965, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Lives and works: Rotterdam (Netherlands) and New York City

What is she researching in her work?

Ellen Gallagher explores race, identity, memory, and the construction of Black subjectivity, particularly within American culture. She investigates how Black people have been represented, especially in historical contexts such as minstrel shows, pseudoscientific imagery, or vintage advertisements. Her work often critiques the stereotypes and systemic structures that shaped these depictions.

She’s deeply interested in Afrofuturism, using speculative narratives, oceanic mythology (like Drexciya, an underwater civilisation of descendants of enslaved Africans), and science fiction to reimagine Black histories and futures.

What are her methods and materials?

Gallagher works with a wide range of materials and techniques, including: Painting (often on lined paper or canvas); Collage using advertisements from old magazines like Ebony or Our World; Drawing and ink work; Sculpture and film (often in collaboration, e.g. with Edgar Cleijne); Layering and cutting: She often sands down, scrapes, or cuts into surfaces, creating physical depth and metaphorical excavation.

These methods allow her to deconstruct images and reconstruct meaning, exposing hidden ideologies or reinterpreting them.

Ellen Gallagher is considered one of the most important contemporary artists examining Black history and visual culture through conceptual, poetic, and formal experimentation. Her work challenges viewers to confront the legacies of racism, but does so in a nuanced and often dreamlike or abstract way. Rather than being didactic, her work invites slow looking, questioning, and unravelling.

2. Mikhail Karikis

FVU, Mikhail Karikis, No Ordinary Protest (2018) [online] At: https://www.fvu.co.uk/watch/no-ordinary-protest/ (Accessed 12.06.2025)

Mikhail Karikis is a Greek-British contemporary artist known for his interdisciplinary practice, which blends sound, performance, moving image, and social engagement. His work often involves collaborations with communities, especially children, young people, and workers, and explores themes of collective agency, environmental justice, activism, and alternative futures.

 METHODS & SIGNIFICANCE

1. Sound and Voice as Political Tools

Karikis frequently uses the human voice, not just for speech or song, but as a means of resistance, transformation, and belonging. He explores how sound can express marginalised identities or suppressed knowledge.

2. Collaborative and Participatory Practice

His works are often made with communities, including children, teenagers, elderly people, or industrial workers. He focuses on empowering people to imagine alternative futures and confront social or ecological challenges.

3. Film, Performance, Installation

He uses a mix of media, but especially video, often structured like poetic documentaries or speculative fictions. The visuals are typically paired with immersive sound design or choral vocalisations.

4. Engagement with Climate, Labour, and Futurity

His projects frequently centre on the relationship between humans, labour, landscape, and ecology, pushing viewers to think critically about what the future might hold.

“No Ordinary Protest” (2018)

What it is: A video work made with children from a London primary school, inspired by The Darker Side of Western Modernity by Walter Mignolo and The Animals of Farthing Wood, a 1990s animated series about animals forced to migrate due to environmental destruction.

The setup: Children play roles in a kind of speculative eco-fantasy. They read, think, dream, and act out future scenarios. The film blurs fiction, protest, and classroom exercise, turning the school into a site of radical imagination.

What it explores: Climate breakdown, protest, and resistance through the lens of children's emotional and intellectual responses. It critiques authority, colonisation, environmental destruction, and promotes collective imagination as a tool of survival and hope. The children’s voices become both literal and symbolic forces of protest.

Why it's interesting: It gives agency to young people, making their thoughts central. It combines tenderness and urgency, mixing play and serious critique. It proposes education as activism and childhood as a political space.

For me, this work felt somewhat artificial. I didn’t fully believe the children, at times it seemed like they were being directed or manipulated. Maybe it’s because of my ongoing research into propaganda and trust in media, but I found myself questioning the authenticity of what I was watching. The children’s expressions and language felt too sophisticated for their age, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the film had been smartly edited to fit a certain narrative.

While I respect the quality of the work and understand its intentions, especially the blending of activism, imagination, and education, it’s not personally my cup of tea. It felt like a mix between an educational program and socially engaged art, but the balance didn’t quite work for me. I believe in the potential of art to create change, but I also think it's important to stay critical when art enters spaces like education, especially when working with children.

Text written with the help of Chat GPT, adapted and enriched with the author's thoughts.