Ja'Tovia Gary

thumb Ja'Tovia Gary (born 1984) is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist working across documentary, avant-garde video art, sculpture, and installation. Quotes I want to expand our thinking of what reality could be and what the past is and what our position is, My goal is to world-bend, to shape our perception, and to challenge our long-held positions. Using what you have to make what you want, I’m obsessed with the notion that the idea of the thing outweighs the materials. The New Generation of Black Artists Boldly Redefining Conceptual Art, September 1 2022 If experimental wasn’t marginalized and diminished, I would have no problem being called experimental. If stories are how we formulate reality—how we make sense of our experience here—but they all follow the same outline, then by changing the form, I’m modeling that you can create a reality radically different from the one you exist under. On Restoration and Repair: A Conversation with Ja’Tovia Gary, April 22 2026 I’m very excited for all of the doors that are opening and the ways that the work is received and experienced, I’ve been at this for a minute. I was waiting tables. It’s not something that I take lightly. I try to stay humble about it because things can change. I remember what it took to get here. I was raised by preachers and I have a really intense spiritual practice. I do not see this as just me out here flexing. I’m very much a vessel for something else to move through. It’s something that I pray about every day — that it is sustained, and that it sustains me. I feel like that’s very much a bedrock for a lot of the work that I do now. Most people are really artistic and creative as children and they kind of wander away from it, they have to, you know, settle.One of our favourites was Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson. There was no gym, there was enhanced improve. There was Shakespeare, there was costume design, there was Greek theatre. Musicians, painters, ceramic artists, dancers. There were a bunch of older Black women teachers. They knew all about the Black female literary tradition, the Black theatrical tradition. So you’re just being poured into. I’m cutting off my hair, I’m going natural. I’m having this awakening. Being affirmed. Like ‘Of course this can be your life,’ being an artist. It can be a liberatory act, it can be an act of transformation. When you’re in a BFA program, it’s like, ‘we’ve got to go hardcore realism,’ and either you’re going to be a slave, or you’re going to be a cook. I wanted to be in charge of directing the story, creating the narrative. It was very much about snatching that bag. My audience is primarily Black women. And I don’t see that as small at all. I see that as quite something. They were making me feel like what I was doing wasn’t that. That I should broaden and take their advice, to cut out my voice and hide my hand. To hear Simone’s ideas around autonomy and artmaking and audience and agency (Who is this for and why?) shifted things for me. When I think about my work, I’m always asking myself these questions. to me, specificity is the name of the game. That’s why I named my show You Smell Like Outside. Only a handful of people know what that means. It’s not about being exclusionary, it’s about centring who I believe are the most vulnerable people in society. The people who are my reflections. Even in this cross-section of women that we spoke to, you had women from West Africa, you had women from South America, you had women from the south, like myself. You had women from New York City. We’re talking about millions of people all over the globe. Yes, millions. Ja’Tovia Gary is a vessel for her artistic ancestors, October 6 2023 I saw something recently online that said, “Art exists, but the artist is a myth.” I found that interesting because in my mind, everybody is an artist. Everybody strives to be an artist in our online-driven space, where everyone is making something, positioning themselves to be seen, or hoping to sell something—whether they made it or whether they stole it. Everybody is attempting to position themselves as a creator. With the idea that art exists, but the artist is a myth—that’s a different framework. I’m trying to see myself through the lens of the former, the myth of the artist, the artist as contributor, the artist as a member of the collective. It’s really about what we can do, what we can give that will alleviate some sort of suffering or bring about some understanding or change the way we view things. oftentimes the impulse is to latch onto something that you’ve seen and maybe emulate aspects of it, if not the entirety of it. And that’s normal. But understand that that is the beginning of the thing. One cannot get comfortable emulating or attempting to reenact something that you have already seen before because it’s already been done. I would encourage emerging artists to have the courage to do the thing that naturally occurs or the impulse that naturally springs forth inside of them unabashedly, without worry, without fear. It’s easier to say this than to do it, but move ahead into unmarked territory as strongly as you can, as often as you can, even when that requires a certain amount of failure, even when that may require a bit of ostracization. This is a notion that comes from Toni Morrison…the more detailed and specific you are about your audience and about your experience when you are creating your work, the more universal it becomes. But what I can do is be very, very clear about what I’m trying to say. And that’s also something that I recommend for young artists coming up. What are you saying and who are you talking to? Those are two questions that I’m constantly asking myself when I’m making my work. On creating without fear, May 14 2024 External links Category:Women artists from the United States Category:1984 births Category:Multimedia artists Category:Video artists Category:Film directors from the United States Category:African Americans Category:People from Dallas Category:Living people