Ellen Pearlman

Ellen Pearlman is currently a Ph.D student at the University of Calgary, Canada in Computational Media and Design. She is Artistic Director of Yuanfen Gallery, the very first gallery of new media in Beijing, China, and was on the Art Panel Review Board for SIGGRAPH ASIA in Yokohama, Japan. Ellen lectured on New Media at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), and the Communications and Animation University in Beijing, the Songzhuang Art Center, and universities in Wuhan and Tianjin. She participated in the first Beijing International Conference on Art Theory and Criticism at CAFA. and the first Conference on Interactive Design at Tsinghua University. Invited by the Open Academy project supported by the Prince Claus Fund of the Netherlands, she went to Ulan Bator, Mongolia to work on presentation and curatorial practices with the Blue Sun arts group and lectured at the Mongolian Fine Arts Academy.

She is one of the founders of both The Brooklyn Rail and Tricycle Magazine and affiliated with nine Utne Magazine Awards. The Asian Cultural Council awarded her a grant to investigate Tibetan sacred dance in most nomadic Eastern Tibet, and to create a documentary film on the subject. Winner of a Canadian Banff Mountain Culture Grant, and a Banff Canadian Center Writer's residency, she has also been a four-time Vermont Studio Center Special President's Fellow, a resident at the Great River Arts Colony in Patzcuaro, Mexico, the Repino Arts Colony in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Red Gate Artist Colony in Beijing, China, and the ACO Residency in Hong Kong. She was part of the government sponsored Chinese Photographers Association trip to Guangxi Zhang Autonomous Region, presented a paper at the Taiwanese Photographer's International Symposium, and delivered a lecture at Hong Kong City University. She has been an arts contributor to Time Out Beijing in English, Yishu Magazine of Contemporary Asian Art, Art Asia Pacific, and Sculpture Magazine. Ellen also worked with the prominent curator and critic Victoria Lu on the Moon River Museum of Contemporary Art.

A finalist for the Andy Warhol/​Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant, she is an editor-at-large for The Brooklyn Rail, a magazine of politics, art and culture which won the Andy Warhol/​Creative Capital Publishing Grant. A Breadloaf Writer's Conference Scholar recommended by the late poet Allen Ginsberg, she attended The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and The Iowa Writer's Workshop. Ellen studied photography and video at The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The International Center of Photography (ICP), and anthropological film at Harvard University. She was the photographer for Harvard Medical School as part of an American Institute of Indian Studies grant researching Tibetan Tumo or heat yogis. She has taught at Columbia University, The M.A. Program in Digital Design at Parsons School of Design and at The New School University.

Ellen received a black belt in Taijitsu (Ninja) under the auspices of Black Belt Hall of Fame Ninja Master Shidoshi Steven Hayes. She is a member of The International Association of Art Critics and listed in the current edition of Who's Who in America.