Ellen Cantor

Ellen Cantor (1961–2013) was an American artist.^[1] Cantor was known for combining pornography, politics, pop culture and the handmade in her paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos, and films.^[2] She was known for her experimental film work, notably Pinochet Porn, a experimental film in the form of a soap opera, following children growing up during Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile.^[3][4][5] Born in Detroit, Michigan to a Jewish family, Cantor completed her studies at Brandeis University in 1983 with a degree in painting. She went on to study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1991.^[6][7]

Life and career

In an interview in 2008, Cantor described her work as “humorous, but also quite disturbing.”^[8] Having grown up in the first generation after the Holocaust, Cantor describes a “strong sense of mourning” in the greater Detroit Jewish community:

From an early age in religious school and amongst family I heard survivors' horrific eyewitness accounts — memory was considered a duty to history and future survival. Also, our Rabbi, Morris Adler, was murdered in front of the congregation. And there was social unrest in Detroit, racism — the race riots. Anti-semitism was, for all practical purposes, institutionalized in Detroit, given Henry Ford’s relationship to Hitler, his anti-Semitic treatises and hiring practices, and Father Caughlin's public sermons. Most of my work is informed by the concerns brought up by these historical circumstances. But I also have the counter-memory of a utopian outlook, the architecture and river, the lakes and natural beauty I grew up with.^[8]

In the last five years of her life, Cantor worked on Pinochet Porn. The film was shot from Circus Lives from Hell, a hand drawn script by Cantor. Cantor cited Mel Brooks, Shalom Asch, and Hernandez Brother’s Love and Rockets comic book as influences.^[9] In the film, Cantor brings together themes of sexuality, identity, and control:

"I don’t approach sex as a subversion or taboo. I consider sexuality normal, particularly when depicting love relationships. The title Pinochet Porn salutes the film characters’ intimate relationships, but refers more to the dictatorship itself – to the regime’s systematic, sadistic, destruction of individual lives – policies furtively upheld by the United States, United Kingdom and the Papacy. In light of this collusion and abuse of power, the film questions, “Is tragedy a choice”?"^[9]

Solo exhibitions and screenings

• Be My Baby, Delfina, London, 1999; XL Xavier LaBoulbenne, New York, 1998 and 1996; Feigen, Chicago, 1997; Cabinet, London, 1996; and Postmasters, New York, 1995.
• Video Drawing 1996-2001, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, 2000; Kunstbunker, Nuremberg, 2001.
• Ellen Cantor Cerith Wyn Evans, Kunsthalle Wien, 2002; Sketch, London, 2005; Prince Charles Cinema, London, 2005.
• Path of Sun – Road of Life, 1000000 mph, London, 2006
• Within a Budding Grove, Participant Inc, New York, 2008; White Cubicle, London, 2008; Abbt Projects, Zurich, 2007
• Subversive Cinema: Ellen Cantor, curated by Lux, Zoo art fair, London, 2009
• Serpentine Cinema: Film in Progress, Serpentine Gallery, curated by Nicola Lees/Victoria Brooks, London, 2009
• Séance de projection de films, La GAD, Gallerie Arnaud Deschin, Marseille, 2011
• The Dictator & the Maid, The Black Mariah, Cork, Ireland, curated by Dallas Seitz & The Black Mariah, 2014
• Ellen Cantor at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart [de] and Cinderella Syndrome at Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco curated by Jamie Stevens and Fatima Hellberg, 2015–16^[1][10]
• Ellen Cantor: My Perversion is the Belief in True Love, Galerie Isabella Bortozzi, Germany, 2018^[11]

Death and legacy

Cantor died on April 22, 2013, in her apartment in New York City after a year-long battle with lung cancer.^[12]