Ellen Gallagher is a contemporary American artist whose work often probes her biracial ethnicity through formal means. In the series Watery Ecstatic (2004), Gallagher examined the history of the West African slave trade and the myth of an aquatic world populated by the children of slaves dropped at sea on their way to the United States. “This idea of repetition and revision is central to my working process-this idea of stacking and layering and building up densities and recoveries,” she has explained. Born on December 16, 1965 in Providence, RI, she is of Cape Verdean and Caucasian descent. Gallagher went on to study at Oberlin College and later received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1992. The artist’s work is influenced from a variety of sources, including Agnes Martin’s paintings, African American-focused publications such as Ebony, and the writings of Gertrude Stein. Gallagher currently lives and works between New York, NY and Rotterdam, Netherlands. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, among others.