Ellen Gallagher (born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1965) is an American painter and multimedia artist whose work has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of several institutions and museums. Her work, centred on questions of race, combines abstract forms with racial stereotypes and questions the "ordering principles" imposed by society.
Gallagher is of mixed-race heritage. Her father was of Cape Verdean descent and her mother came from a working-class Irish Catholic family. She studied at Oberlin and later at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, graduating in 1992. Before devoting herself to art she worked as a commercial fisher in Alaska and Maine. Her first solo exhibition took place at Mary Boone in New York, and by 1995 she was recognised as an artist.
Her best-known works are her magazine collages, made from advertisements in publications aimed at Black American readers such as Ebony and Our World, which she repeats and alters through printmaking, screenprinting and collage. She uses motifs such as exaggerated lips and insect eyes, drawn from the tradition of Black minstrel shows. Her influences include the Darkroom poets' collective and the minimalist abstraction of Agnes Martin. Her work has been shown at the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale.