Ellie Ga: The Fortunetellers | Whitney Biennial 2019

The Fortunetellers is a narrative-based performance drawn from 2019 Biennial artist Ellie Ga’s experiences during a five-month expedition near the North Pole. Ga combines memories with a vast array of documents—including photographs, videos, annotated sketches, maps, and travel logs—created and archived during her travels. She superimposes live storytelling, recorded sound, still images, and moving images to conjure up the terms and rituals of daily life in the Arctic night. The project meditates upon the nature of prediction as it was manifested during the expedition, including ancient forms of fortunetelling, weather forecasting, oceanographic research, and the day-to-day routines of a crew drifting in the Arctic with no control over their immediate future, where they will be next, or when they will return home.