Ellie Ga
American, born 1976
It Was Restored Again comes from Ellie Ga's larger project “Square, Octagon, Circle,” 2012–14, a series that uses the destroyed Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt, as a point of departure. Built in the 3rd century BCE, this remarkable symbol of technological advancement stood for centuries as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The slide installation It Was Restored Again stitches together centuries of efforts to understand and represent the lost Wonder. These include written and verbal descriptions, as well as images made by historians, archaeologists, artists, and proud Alexandrians. With an explorer’s intuition and the astute eye of an archivist, Ga gathers fleeting moments that often do not make it into the chronicles of history—materials she calls “discarded pieces of the past.”
Label from Ellie Ga: It Was Restored Again, May 31–September 14, 2014