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
^ ab"Interview with Ellen Cantor". Hartmut Austen artist website. Originally published in the "considering Detroit” exhibition catalog, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, May 10 – July 27, 2008. Archived(PDF) from the original on July 20, 2024.
