Ellie Kingsbury

Form+Content Gallery presents an interactive show that shares the spirit of body, through photographic images of burlesque performers.

Exhibition Dates:

September 14 – October 21, 2023

Opening Reception

Saturday, September 23, 6:00 – 8:30 pm

Interpretive performance will start around 6:45 pm, after which the audience will be invited to interact with the work.

"Some Body" will also be included in these special events:
October 14th, NOLO Art Walk, from 5:30 – 8:00 pm
Twin Cities Art Week, September 27 – October 1. Visit www.tcartweek.org for more info

Artist's Statement

*Ellie Kingsbury, “Two Silks,” digital photography on habotai silk and organza, 36”w x 15”h, 2023*

Ellie Kingsbury has long studied cultural expectations of the body, largely through photographic images of “ordinary” people. She has started a new chapter of this work by photographing burlesque performers. Removed from the stage, set onto plain black backgrounds, and printed on large panels of silk, these bodies undulate, ripple, and transform, summoning thoughts of spirit over skin. She furthers the effect by utilizing physical dimension as well as the dimension of time and space.

What do we share with these sequined, glamorous performers? Do we equate the burlesque community as just bodies on a stage, or do we contemplate the person behind the costume? Do we all put ourselves on stage from time to time? Do burlesque performers feel limited by the same cultural expectations that we live with? When we watch burlesque do we understand a difference between sexualizing a body and celebrating sensuality?

Working with these questions, the artist reception will feature everyday (non-burlesque) performers who will interact with the silks, and invite the audience to do the same.

Artist's Biography

Ellie Kingsbury has used photography as her principle art form for the past 40 years, and for the last 5 years has incorporated mixed media into her projects. As a life-long Midwesterner, her ideas have always been rooted in the beauty and life force found in the ordinary. Kingsbury received a MRAC Next Step grant for “Some Bodies,” received a McKnight Fellowship for her project “Automatic Beyond Belief,” a story of Industrial Design Age kitchen appliances, and is a twice recipient of the Artist Initiative grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has shown both nationally and internationally, including group shows in Beijing, Helsinki, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Portland, OR. She has been included in many group shows in Minneapolis area galleries, including the Katherine Nash Gallery, the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, the Phipps, and the Bloomington Arts Center. She has had solo shows at the Vine Arts Center, Form+Content Gallery, and Cameraworks Gallery.

Kingsbury has been a member of Form+Content Gallery since 2018 and sits on the board of directors of Traffic Zone Center for Visual Arts in Minneapolis.

/somebody