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Destabilizing the Sign: The Collage Work of Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, and Mickalene Thomas

Swami, Kara
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1367942466

Abstract Details

2013, MA, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History.
This study focuses on the collage work of three living female artists of the African diaspora: Ellen Gallagher (1965), Wangechi Mutu (1972), and Mickalene Thomas (1971). As artists dealing with themes of race and identity, the collage medium provides a site where Gallagher, Mutu, and Thomas communicate ideas about black visibility and representation in our postmodern society. This study explores the semiotic implications in their work, and theorizes their employment of cultural signs as indicators of identity. Ellen Gallagher builds many of her collages on found magazine pages advertising wigs for black women in particular. She defaces the content of these pages by applying abstracted body parts, such as floating eyes and engorged lips, borrowed from black minstrel imagery. Through a process of abstraction and repetition, Gallagher exposes the arbitrariness of the sign—a theory posed by Ferdinand de Sausurre’s semiotic principles—and thereby destabilizes the significance of racial imagery. Wangechi Mutu, on the other hand, juxtaposes fragmented images from media sources to construct hybridized figures that are at once beautiful and grotesque. Mutu’s hybrid figures and her juxtaposition of disparate images reveal the versatility of the sign while also questioning the oppositional binaries that essentialize cultures and people. Her collaged figures demonstrate the difficulty in categorizing individuals or cultures, especially in our world of increasing globalization. Finally, Mickalene Thomas photographs tableaux vivants in her studio and creates collaged versions from her photographs that emphasize the craft of the artist’s hand. Thomas flattens the spatial recession of the original image, retains the blunt edges of her collaged fragments, and decorates the surface with rhinestones, all of which direct attention to the physical surface of the work. Although many of her images appropriate Western canons, but Thomas personalizes the image by decorating the interior with vibrant patterns and featuring black women as her sitters. Thomas’s images explore costume, dress, patterns, and other material objects as signifiers of identity. In addition, she rebuilds iconicity by placing the black women front and center. Overall, Gallagher, Mutu, and Thomas use their art to contribute to the ongoing discourse concerning black visibility. As they explore the sign’s power to signify identity, they employ the collage medium to expose the versatility of the sign and thereby demonstrate the fragility of representation.
Kimberly Paice, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Susan Aberth, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Morgan Thomas, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
99 p.
Art History
collage; African diaspora; identity; semiotics; feminism; race;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Swami, K. (2013). Destabilizing the Sign: The Collage Work of Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, and Mickalene Thomas [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1367942466

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Swami, Kara. Destabilizing the Sign: The Collage Work of Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, and Mickalene Thomas. 2013. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1367942466.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Swami, Kara. "Destabilizing the Sign: The Collage Work of Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, and Mickalene Thomas." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1367942466

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1367942466
3,082
© 2013, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Destabilizing the Sign: The Collage Work of Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, and Mickalene Thomas by Kara Swami is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.