Janiva Ellis
Janiva Ellis (born 1987) is an American painter based in Brooklyn, NY and Los Angeles, CA. Ellis creates figurative paintings that explore the African-American female experience, while incorporating her journey of self-identity within the Black community.
Janiva Ellis
- Name
- Janiva Ellis
- Born
- 1987
- Birthplace
- Oakland, California, U.S.
- Training
- California College of the Arts
- Field
- Painting
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q61895632 · wikipedia · Janiva Ellis
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
The documentary record
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Getty Union List of Artist Names
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Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Janiva Ellis • Born — 1987 • Birthplace — Oakland, California, U.S. • Training — California College of the Arts • Field — Painting
Documentary record
Janiva Ellis, a painter, was born in 1987. The birth is recorded by the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Getty Union List of Artist Names.
Early life and education
Early life and education
Born in Oakland, California, Ellis is biracial. Her mother is white, and her father is black. She was raised by her mother and moved to Hawaii at the age of 7, moving between the islands of Kauai and Oahu. From the age of 10 to 16, she lived in Kauai. She started painting at age 10, and was mentored by Tammy Day, a 20-year-old black woman. Hawaii has a small Black population, and Ellis' work investigates the complex racial dynamic of her upbringing and the biracial origins of her identity. Ellis studied painting at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, graduating in 2012.
Professional onset
Professional onset
Upon graduating in 2012, Ellis took a pause from the art world and returned to Hawaii. Ellis did not find any inspiration from the New York art scene, nor companions of the same ethnic background. This was a big loss for Ellis's self identity and reasons why she left Hawaii to begin with. After taking a few years to find herself, Ellis returned to New York in 2017 with a new outlook on her upbringing and a sense of self identity being both black and white. In one of Ellis's recent works, The Angles, held at the Hammer Vault Gallery, in Los Angeles, California, she relates her experience of feeling confusion and chaos of the self and the beauty of when one finds the self and accepts what is to be in the work. Critic Aram Moshayedi writes, "Decay and loss permeateThe Angels, yet the intimate experience of looking closely and allowing oneself to succumb to the painting’s wrapping embrace reveals moments of flourish and signs of life amidst the debris." • Illustration — Janiva Ellis, The Angles, Hammer Projects (2022), Oil on Canvas
Art career
Art career
• 2017 - "You Catch More Flies With Arsenic Than Honey” - Club Pro, Los Angeles, California • 2017 - "Cabin Fever" - BBQLA, Los Angeles California • 2017 - "Lick Shot” - 47 Canal, New York City • 2017 - "Prick Up Your Ears” - Karma International, Los Angeles, California • 2018 - “Painting: Now & Forever, Part III” - Greene Naftali, New York City • 2018 - Triennial: “Songs for Sabotage” - New Museum, New York City • 2018 - "Keebler’s Revenge" -The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City • 2019 - Whitney Biennial 2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City • 2021 - "Janiva Ellis: Rats" - Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami • 2022 - "The Angles" - Hammer Vault Gallery, Los Angeles, California • 2025 - "Fear Corroded Ape" - Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Artistic practice
• Illustration — Janiva Ellis, "Doubt-Guardian", 2018, Oil on Canvas Ellis describes her paintings as, “not only an attempt to communicate to nonblack women my experience, but also to call to other black women, ‘Do you feel this, too?’” Critic Rachel Corbett has commended Ellis for the psychoanalytic tension in her paintings, stating "The calm country landscapes in the background of Ellis’s paintings clash with her psychologically tormented subjects, who are often tyrannized by cartoon characters." Occasionally, Ellis's paintings incorporate religious symbology; such as lambs or angels, referencing the canon of religious painting. In each of her works Ellis continues to share her story incorporating different parts of her self identity. In 2017, Ellis presented "Lick Shot" at 47 Canal, her first solo show in New York City. In 2018, Ellis participated in the New Museum Triennial - “Songs for Sabotage.” Then in 2019 Ellis was included in the Whitney Biennial curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta. In the 2025 exhibition "Fear Corroded Ape," her work was presented at Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
Awards
• Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant, 2018 • Stanley Hollander Award, 2018
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Janiva Ellis, revision 1359497597 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Sheets, Hilarie M. Meet Six Disrupters at the New Museum's Triennial. The New York Times. 2 February 2018.
- 2.Brown, Laura. Stress and Jest: A Conversation with Janiva Ellis. www.x-traonline.org. Vol 21, no 2. Winter 2018.
- 3.The 6 Rising Artists to Watch in 2019. W Magazine. 2019-01-29.
- 4.Hammer Projects: Janiva Ellis Hammer Museum. hammer.ucla.edu. 2022-09-24.
- 5.47 Canal Janiva Ellis. 47canal.us.
- 6.Corbett, Rachel. 5 Young Stars-in-the-Making From the New Museum's 'Songs for Sabotage' Triennial. Artnet News. 2018-02-13.
- 7.Janiva Ellis “Lick Shot” at 47 Canal, New York — Mousse Magazine and Publishing. www.moussemagazine.it. 2017-07-16.
- 8.Whitney Biennial 2019. whitney.org.
- 9.CCVA Janiva Ellis: Fear Corroded Ape.
- 10.Diehl, Travis. A Painter Whose Complex Work Is Never Finished. The New York Times. 174. 60453. AR10. March 9, 2025. 0362-4331.
- 11.Proceed with caution: finding hope in the perils of 'You Catch More Flies with Arsenic Than Honey' atractivoquenobello. www.aqnb.com.
- 12.Datebook: Photos of adult babies, race and the public figure, and weaving Brazil's landscape. Los Angeles Times. 2017-07-20.
- 13.Janiva Ellis “Lick Shot” at 47 Canal, New York — Mousse Magazine and Publishing. www.moussemagazine.it. 2017-07-16.
- 14.Janiva Ellis. Contemporary Art Library.
- 15.2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage. www.newmuseum.org.
- 16.Cascone, Sarah. Editors' Picks: 19 Things Not to Miss in New York’s Art World This Week. Artnet News. 2020-03-03.
- 17.Whitney Biennial 2019. whitney.org.
- 18.Janiva Ellis: Rats. Feb 25 – Sep 12, 2021. Special Exhibition / 2nd Floor. Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
- 19.Hammer Projects: Janiva Ellis Hammer Museum. hammer.ucla.edu. 2022-09-24.
- 20.Russeth, Andrew. Here Are the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s 2018 Los Angeles Grantees. ARTnews.com. 2018-02-05.
- 21.Announcing the 2018 Emerging Artist Grantees in Los Angeles. Rema Hort Mann Foundation. 2018-02-02.
References
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