Angela Ellsworth is an interdisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, drawing, installation, and performance. Her solo and collaborative work draws on a broad range of topics: illness (particularly her personal battle with cancer in her twenties), physical fitness, endurance, religious traditions (influenced by her family’s history and especially her great, great, grandfather, Lorenzo Snow, who was the fifth prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), and social issues (such as queerness and non-heteronormative relationships in contemporary society as well as the tradition of polygamy with the early history of Mormonism.)
Addressing the secret languages pulsing beneath officially-sanctioned accounts of history and religion, Ellsworth’s mysterious, entrancing objects and performances draw lines of communication between her Mormon ancestry and the work of 19th and 20th century female mystics, delving into an unspoken realm of gestural language, psychic connection, and sensuous geometry. In 2014, she founded the Museum of Walking, which is committed to conversations about land, action and site within the context of art.
Ellsworth holds a MFA in painting and performance from Rutgers University and a BA in photography and painting from Hampshire College. Her work has been shown internationally including at The Getty Center (CA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia), Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, Poland), National Review of Live Art (Glasgow, UK), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (CA), Museum of Contemporary Art (CO), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (AZ), Phoenix Art Museum (AZ) and as part of the 17th Biennale of Sydney.
