Ja'Tovia Gary: Difference between revisions

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* ”The Giverny Suite”, [[Museum of Modern Art]], New York, NY<ref>{{Cite news |last=Price |first=Yasmina |date=6 September 2023 |orig-date=30 August 2023 |title=Ja’Tovia Gary Sets Her Sights on Love |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/t-magazine/jatovia-gary-moma.html |url-access=registration |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250719195950/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/t-magazine/jatovia-gary-moma.html |archive-date=19 July 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |work=[[The New York Times]] |pages=D.3 |publication-date=7 September 2023 |id={{ProQuest|2861547318}}}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Kalil-Barrino |first=Marisa |date=12 September 2023 |title=Multidisciplinary Artist Ja’Tovia Gary Challenges Neutrality in Filmmaking at MoMA Exhibit |url=https://www.essence.com/entertainment/jatovia-gary-the-giverny-suite-debuts-moma/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250718233423/https://www.essence.com/entertainment/jatovia-gary-the-giverny-suite-debuts-moma/ |archive-date=18 July 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |work=[[Essence (magazine)|Essence]]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=30 September 2023 |title=Ja’Tovia Gary’s The Giverny Suite Now on view at MoMA: A cinematic poem that advocates for the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women filmed in Harlem and Monet’s garden |url=https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/new-york/2023/09/30/jatovia-garys-the-giverny-suite-now-on-view-at-moma/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231004154856/https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/new-york/2023/09/30/jatovia-garys-the-giverny-suite-now-on-view-at-moma/ |archive-date=4 October 2023 |access-date=24 September 2025 |work=La Voce di New York}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Works: The Giverny Suite – Ja’Tovia Gary – 2019 |url=https://www.moma.org/collection/works/420752 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250324173853/https://www.moma.org/collection/works/420752 |archive-date=24 March 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |website=[[Museum of Modern Art]]}}</ref>

* ”Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD”, [[Dallas Museum of Art]], Dallas, TX<ref>{{Cite news |last=Neal |first=Laura |date=1 September 2023 |title=Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD |url=https://southwestcontemporary.com/jatovia-gary-i-know-it-was-the-blood-dallas-museum-of-art/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250324095722/https://southwestcontemporary.com/jatovia-gary-i-know-it-was-the-blood-dallas-museum-of-art/ |archive-date=24 March 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |work=Southwest Contemporary |volume=8 Medium + Support |issn=2766-3019}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Murphy |first=Yume |date=2 October 2023 |title=Glimmer in the Grit: Sitting with Ja’Tovia Gary’s everyday sublime |url=https://www.blackstarfest.org/seen/read/issue-006/glimmer-in-the-grit/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250814014622/https://www.blackstarfest.org/seen/read/issue-006/glimmer-in-the-grit/ |archive-date=14 August 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |work=Seen |publisher=Blackstar |issue=6 |issn=2694-5274}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2023 |title=Exhibitions – Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD |url=https://cms.dma.org/art/exhibitions/concentrations-64-jatovia-gary-i-know-it-was-blood |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250924225451/https://cms.dma.org/art/exhibitions/concentrations-64-jatovia-gary-i-know-it-was-blood |archive-date=24 September 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |website=[[Dallas Museum of Art]]}}</ref>

* ”You Smell Like Outside…”, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023 |title=Exhibitions: Ja’Tovia Gary – You Smell Like Outside… |url=https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/jatovia-gary#tab:slideshow;tab-1:thumbnails |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250129104408/https://www.paulacoopergallery.com/exhibitions/jatovia-gary#tab:slideshow;tab-1:thumbnails |archive-date=29 January 2025 |access-date=24 September 2025 |website=[[Paula Cooper Gallery]]}}</ref>

* You Smell Like Outside…, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY

2021

* The Giverny Suite, ZOLLAMT MMK, Frankfurt, Germany

American artist and filmmaker

Ja’Tovia Gary is an American artist and filmmaker from Dallas, Texas. Her work is held in the permanent collections at the Whitney Museum, Studio Museum of Harlem, and others. She is best known for her documentary film The Giverny Document (2019), which received awards including the Moving Ahead Award at the Locarno Film Festival,^[1] the Juror Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Experimental Film at the Blackstar Film Festival, and the Douglas Edwards Experimental Film Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.^[2]

Early life and education

[edit]

Gary was born in Dallas, Texas and raised in the nearby suburb of Cedar Hill,^[2] in a Pentecostal church community.^[3] As a student she was active in local theatre programs and went on to receive her diploma from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.^[2]

Gary pursued a professional career in acting but she soon became disheartened by the reductive roles and characters that she was offered.^[3] She then enrolled at Brooklyn College and completed a dual bachelor of art degree in Documentary Film Production and Africana Studies.^[2]

She later received her MFA in Social Documentary Filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. She also holds a Documentary Filmmaking Certificate from the LV Prasad Academy in Chennai, India.^[4]

Gary’s work has focused on themes such as black feminist subjectivity and has confronted the history of these subjects by featuring archival footage in her work. Her 2015 short film An Ecstatic Experience combined clips of actress Ruby Dee with an interview of Assata Shakur, using a technique she called “direct animation.”^[2]

In 2016, Gary participated in the Terra Summer Residency program, in Giverny, France.^[5]^[6]^[7] During that time, she produced her short film Giverny I (Négresse Impériale), which combined video clips of herself with the footage filmed by Philando Castile‘s girlfriend shortly after he was shot by a police officer. The film is also included in her 2019 documentary The Giverny Document that explores what it means to live life as a Black woman.^[8] The film received critical acclaim and garnered awards from festivals including the Blackstar Film Festival and Locarno International Film Festival.^[2]

In conversation with Michael B. Gillespie, a film theorist and historian at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, Gary described her process: “I am simultaneously creating and destroying, remaking and unmaking. My intimate interaction with the archive… expresses my desire to be a part of it, to make my presence felt in and on that history while also interrogating it.”^[9] Gillespie noted that “Gary renders film blackness as cinema in the wake, an assemblage of work that poses new circuits and aesthetic accountings of blackness, sociality, and obliteration.”^[9]

Gary worked as a post-production and archival assistant for Spike Lee‘s Bad 25 and Shola Lynch‘s Free Angela and All Political Prisoners,^[10] as well as assistant editor on Jackie Robinson, a two-part biographical documentary directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, which premiered April 2016 on PBS.^[11]

Her work has received financial support including the Creative Capital award,^[12] support from the DOC Society,^[13] the Jerome Foundation, Rooftop Films,^[14] the Free History Project,^[15] BritDOC, and the Sundance Institute. In 2022 she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.^[16]^[17]

Gary in a short film made in a 2014 Mono No Aware workshop

In 2008, Gary appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV as Cherise Glover, the random encounters character.^[18]

In June 2013, Gary was among the founding members of the New Negress Film Society, a collective of black women filmmakers that seeks to create a community and raise awareness of black female voices and stories in the film industry.^[19]^[20]

She has taught at The New School and Mono No Aware in New York City.^[21]

Gary was a 2018–2019 Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center fellow at Harvard University.^[7] She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, and by Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris.^[22]

2023

The Giverny Suite, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY^[23]^[24]^[25]^[26]
Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX^[27]^[28]^[29]
You Smell Like Outside…, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY^[30]

2021

The Giverny Suite, ZOLLAMT MMK, Frankfurt, Germany

2020

flesh that needs to be loved, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY
Hammer Projects: Ja’Tovia Gary, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA

2019

Ja’Tovia Gary: Giverny I (Négresse Impériale), Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY^[31]
Tactile Cosmologies, galerie frank elbaz, Paris, France.
Screenings 4, University of San Diego Humanities Center Galleries, San Diego, CA

2018

Giverny I (NÉGRESSE IMPÉRIALE), Boston University Galleries ANNEX, Boston, MA
A Care Ethic, UC Santa Barbara Museum of Architecture and Design, CA

2017

Modern Mondays: An Evening with Ja’Tovia Gary, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY
An Ecstatic Experience, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA

Permanent collections

[edit]

Gary’s work is held in the permanent collections of the following institutions:

Accolades and awards

[edit]

2025

2024

2023

Nancy Graves Foundation Award
Best Experimental Film at Urbanworld Film Festival, Quiet as It’s Kept
Special Jury Mention for Experimentation at AFI Fest, Quiet as It’s Kept
Special Mention Experimental Film Jury Award at BlackStar Film Festival, Quiet as It’s Kept

2022

2020

Directors’ Choice Award at Spectral Film Festival, The Giverny Document (Single Channel)
Best Experimental Film at BlackStar Film Festival, The Giverny Document (Single Channel)
Top Grit Award at Indie Grits Film Festival, The Giverny Document (Single Channel)
Juror Award at Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Giverny Document (Single Channel)

2019

2018

2017

2016

Jury Award at Haverhill Experimental Film Festival, An Ecstatic Experience
Special Jury Award at New Orleans Film Festival, An Ecstatic Experience

2023

Quiet As It’s Kept – Writer, director, editor, animator

2019

The Giverny Document (Single Channel) – Writer, director, editor, animator^[8]

2017

The Evidence of Things Not Seen – Director^[37]

2015

An Ecstatic Experience – Writer, director, editor, animator^[38]

2013

Cakes Da Killa: No Homo – Writer, director, editor^[39]
Cakes Da Killa Goodies Goodies Music Video – Director, editor
Women’ s Work – Writer, director, editor

2012

Deconstructing Your Mother – Writer, director, editor

2010

Sound Rite – Writer, director, editor

2016

2015

2012

Spike Lee’s Bad 25, 40 Acres and a Mule, Archival Researcher
Shola Lynch’s Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, RealSide Productions, Post Production Assistant

2008

^ Blaney, Martin (17 August 2019). “Locarno Film Festival 2019 winners revealed”. Screen Daily. Archived from the original on 15 April 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Gyarkye, Lovia (10 August 2020). “The Artist and Filmmaker Envisioning a Safer World for Black Women”. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. ProQuest 2431758812. Archived from the original on 20 July 2025. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
^ ^a ^b Sanchez, Allison (24 May 2018). “This Artist Is Shifting The Status Quo To Magnify Marginalized Voices”. UPROXX. Archived from the original on 7 August 2025. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
^ “Artists: Ja’Tovia Gary”. Paula Cooper Gallery. Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
^ Cohen, Rachel (Winter 2024). “Inheriting Impressionism: Ja’Tovia Gary and Claude Monet in the gardens of Giverny”. The Yale Review. 112 (4): 175–195. doi:10.1353/tyr.2024.a945782. ProQuest 3150446784. Archived from the original on 24 September 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ Cohn, Pamela (2020). Lucid Dreaming : Conversations with 29 Filmmakers. New York: OR Books. p. 196. ISBN 9781682192351. OCLC 1341376676. Retrieved 23 September 2025 – via Google Books.
^ ^a ^b ^c “Fellowship / Fellows – Ja’Tovia Gary”. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. 5 April 2018. Archived from the original on 18 January 2025. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
^ ^a ^b Dozier, Ayanna (3 February 2020). “Sound Garden”. Artforum. Archived from the original on 5 June 2024. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ ^a ^b Reich, Elizabeth (22 June 2017). “Cinema Notes / American Letters / Elizabeth Reich, Courtney R. Baker, and Michael B. Gillespie“. ASAP/Journal. ISSN 2381-4705. Archived from the original on 11 August 2025. Retrieved 2018-11-21.
^ “Cinema Today — Film Blackness: Screening of various films by Frances Bodomo and Ja’Tovia Gary”. Lewis Center for the Arts. 2017. Archived from the original on 26 July 2024. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
^ Greenberger, Alex (21 February 2020). “With Her Artful Documentaries and Sculptural Arrays, Ja’Tovia Gary Places Black Women at the Center”. ARTnews. Archived from the original on 18 July 2025. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
^ “Projects: The Evidence of Things Not Seen”. Creative Capital. 2019. Archived from the original on 27 July 2021. Retrieved 24 February 2019.
^ “Film: The Evidence of Things Not Seen”. Doc Society. 2017. Archived from the original on 16 May 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ Montpelier, Rachel (19 January 2017). ““Cameraperson” Director Kirsten Johnson Receives Rooftop Films Grant”. Women and Hollywood. Archived from the original on 24 September 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025 – via Medium. Rooftop Films / Technological Cinevideo Services Camera Grant – Ja’Tovia Gary, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen”
^ “2017 Sarah Jacobson Grantees”. Free History Project. 2017. Archived from the original on 14 August 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ ^a ^b “Guggenheim Announces 2022 Fellowship Recipients”. Artforum. 8 April 2022. Archived from the original on 18 July 2025. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
^ ^a ^b “Fellows: Ja’Tovia Monique Gary”. Guggenheim Fellowship. 2022. Archived from the original on 14 December 2024. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ ^a ^b “Ja’Tovia Gary”. Metacritic. Archived from the original on 20 June 2022. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
^ “The New Negress Film Society”. Black Camera. 13 (1): 565–566. Fall 2021. doi:10.2979/blackcamera.13.1.0565. ISSN 1536-3155. JSTOR 10.2979/blackcamera.13.1.0565.
^ “New Negress Film Society – About”. New Negress Film Society. Archived from the original on 7 February 2025. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
^ “Direct Filmmaking Animation Techniques”. Mono No Aware. Archived from the original on 12 December 2024. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
^ Selvin, Claire (3 June 2019). “Paula Cooper Gallery Now Represents Ja’Tovia M. Gary”. ARTnews. Archived from the original on 7 December 2024. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
^ Price, Yasmina (6 September 2023) [30 August 2023]. “Ja’Tovia Gary Sets Her Sights on Love”. The New York Times (published 7 September 2023). pp. D.3. ProQuest 2861547318. Archived from the original on 19 July 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ Kalil-Barrino, Marisa (12 September 2023). “Multidisciplinary Artist Ja’Tovia Gary Challenges Neutrality in Filmmaking at MoMA Exhibit”. Essence. Archived from the original on 18 July 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “Ja’Tovia Gary’s The Giverny Suite Now on view at MoMA: A cinematic poem that advocates for the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women filmed in Harlem and Monet’s garden”. La Voce di New York. 30 September 2023. Archived from the original on 4 October 2023. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “Works: The Giverny Suite – Ja’Tovia Gary – 2019″. Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 24 March 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ Neal, Laura (1 September 2023). “Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD“. Southwest Contemporary. Vol. 8 Medium + Support. ISSN 2766-3019. Archived from the original on 24 March 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ Murphy, Yume (2 October 2023). “Glimmer in the Grit: Sitting with Ja’Tovia Gary’s everyday sublime”. Seen. No. 6. Blackstar. ISSN 2694-5274. Archived from the original on 14 August 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “Exhibitions – Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD“. Dallas Museum of Art. 2023. Archived from the original on 24 September 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “Exhibitions: Ja’Tovia Gary – You Smell Like Outside…“. Paula Cooper Gallery. 2023. Archived from the original on 29 January 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “Memorial Art Gallery Presents the Rochester Premiere of Giverny I (NÉGRESSE IMPÉRIALE) by Ja’Tovia Gary”. Memorial Art Gallery. 5 December 2019. Archived from the original on 17 December 2024. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ “Artists: Ja’Tovia Gary”. Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on 24 June 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ “Artwork: Citational Ethics (Saidiya Hartman, 2017) – Ja’Tovia Gary”. Thoma Foundation. Archived from the original on 12 October 2024. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ “NOFF 2017 + 2018 Jury Award Winners > 2018 NOFF Audience Award Winners > Audience Award: Experimental Short”. New Orleans Film Festival. Archived from the original on 17 March 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “NOFF 2017 + 2018 Jury Award Winners > 2018 NOFF Jury Award Winners > Best Experimental Short”. New Orleans Film Festival. Archived from the original on 17 March 2025. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
^ “25 New Faces of Independent Film 2017: Ja’Tovia Gary”. Filmmaker Magazine. 2017. Archived from the original on 14 November 2024. Retrieved 3 March 2018.
^ “Film – Details – The Evidence of Things Not Seen“. Tribeca Film Institute. 2017. Archived from the original on 24 September 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ Rodriguez, Shellyne (26 February 2018). “An Incomplete History of Protest: Shellyne Rodriguez on Ja’Tovia Gary”. Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on 18 August 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ “52nd AAFF Audience Award Winners”. Ann Arbor Film Festival. 10 July 2014. Archived from the original on 8 February 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
^ “Ken Burns > Jackie Robinson > Film Credits”. PBS. Archived from the original on 30 March 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025.

Ja’Tovia Gary: Difference between revisions

Early life and education

Permanent collections

Accolades and awards

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Early life and education

Permanent collections

Accolades and awards

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