Ja'Tovia M. Gary is an American artist and filmmaker based in
Brooklyn, New York.Gary was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, in a
Pentecostal church community. Before becoming a filmmaker, Gary
pursued a professional career in acting, but she soon became
disheartened by the reductive roles and characters that she was
offered in the film industry. In Filmmaker magazine, Gary described
this disillusionment as an impetus for her shift from acting to
filmmaking: "I was getting debasing roles. In Grand Theft Auto IV, I
was the voice of a drug dealer's battered girlfriend, and you as a
player would opt to save me or not. I wanted control over my
image."Gary's work seeks to liberate the distorted histories through
which Black life is often viewed, while fleshing out a nuanced and
multivalent Black interiority. Through documentary film, archival
footage, and experimental video art, Gary charts the ways in which
structures of power shape our perceptions around representation, race,
gender, sexuality, and violence.[better source needed] Gary has also
focused on themes such as black feminist subjectivity and has
confronted the often painful history of these subjects by featuring
archival footage in her work. In conversation with Michael B.
Gillespie, a film theorist and historian at the Lewis Center for the
Arts at Princeton University, Gary describes her process:Gillespie
notes 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."
Brooklyn, New York.Gary was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, in a
Pentecostal church community. Before becoming a filmmaker, Gary
pursued a professional career in acting, but she soon became
disheartened by the reductive roles and characters that she was
offered in the film industry. In Filmmaker magazine, Gary described
this disillusionment as an impetus for her shift from acting to
filmmaking: "I was getting debasing roles. In Grand Theft Auto IV, I
was the voice of a drug dealer's battered girlfriend, and you as a
player would opt to save me or not. I wanted control over my
image."Gary's work seeks to liberate the distorted histories through
which Black life is often viewed, while fleshing out a nuanced and
multivalent Black interiority. Through documentary film, archival
footage, and experimental video art, Gary charts the ways in which
structures of power shape our perceptions around representation, race,
gender, sexuality, and violence.[better source needed] Gary has also
focused on themes such as black feminist subjectivity and has
confronted the often painful history of these subjects by featuring
archival footage in her work. In conversation with Michael B.
Gillespie, a film theorist and historian at the Lewis Center for the
Arts at Princeton University, Gary describes her process:Gillespie
notes 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."
Share this
SUBSCRIBE OUR NEWSLETTER
SUBSCRIBE OUR NEWSLETTER
Join us for free and get valuable content delivered right through your inbox.