Ellen Gallagher’s work explores the area of racial stereotyping, particularly as embodied in such comedy entertainment as the minstrel show. In these shows white entertainers (usually recent immigrants to America) would paint their faces black in order, according to Gallagher, to gain a “portal into American culture”. Using copybook paper as the background to her painted hieroglyphic eyes and lips, Gallagher alludes to 19th century minstrel playbooks in which racist and pornographic songs were written in an infantile black dialect. She also draws attention to the use of images of black people in the commercial world, saying: “More than the images themselves, I realized that I was interested in the language surrounding these images. There’s an insistent denial, in the face of these images, that really amazes me. So there’s been a slow development towards the minstrel show because it’s an attempt to embody language.”