Ellen Cantor

Overview

Through a multimedia art practice that encompassed drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and film, as well as through her work as a curator and writer, Ellen Cantor (1961-2013) advanced bold new feminist representations of sexuality and female disempowerment and empowerment. With wit and a critical eye, Cantor displays a masterful facility in re-editing appropriated footage, from Disney and The Sound of Music to Antonioni and Cassavetes films, porn, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Through her self-conscious use of consumer video, Cantor both calls attention to the constructed fantasies on screen and heightens an illusion of reality. Integrating Hollywood fairy tale castles, horror movie "final girls," homemade sex tapes, and video diaries into her own "'true' love stories," Cantor troubles boundaries between fiction and life, as well as public and private.