Ja'Tovia Gary


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, which received awards including the Moving Ahead Award at the Locarno Film Festival, 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.
WWW jatovia.com

Early life and education

Gary was born in Dallas, Texas and raised in the nearby suburb of Cedar Hill, in a Pentecostal church community. 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.
Gary pursued a professional career in acting but she soon became disheartened by the reductive roles and characters that she was offered. She then enrolled at Brooklyn College and completed a dual bachelor of art degree in Documentary Film Production and Africana Studies.
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.

Career

Filmmaking

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."
In 2016, Gary participated in the Terra Summer Residency program, in Giverny, France. During that time, she produced her short film Giverny I , 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. The film received critical acclaim and garnered awards from festivals including the Blackstar Film Festival and Locarno International Film Festival.
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." 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."
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, 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.
Her work has received financial support including the Creative Capital award, support from the DOC Society, the Jerome Foundation, Rooftop Films, the Free History Project, BritDOC, and the Sundance Institute. In 2022 she received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Other work

In 2008, Gary appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV as Cherise Glover, the random encounters character.
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.
She has taught at The New School and Mono No Aware in New York City.
Gary was a 2018–2019 Radcliffe-Harvard Film Study Center fellow at Harvard University. She is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, and by Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris.

Solo exhibitions

2023The Giverny Suite, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NYConcentrations 64: Ja'Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TXYou Smell Like Outside..., Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY
2021The Giverny Suite, ZOLLAMT MMK, Frankfurt, Germany
2020flesh that needs to be loved, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NYHammer Projects: Ja'Tovia Gary, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
2019Giverny I , Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NYTactile Cosmologies, Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, FranceScreenings 4, University of San Diego Humanities Center Galleries, San Diego, CA
2018Giverny I , Boston University Galleries ANNEX, Boston, MAA Care Ethic, UC Santa Barbara Museum of Architecture and Design, CA
2017

Permanent collections

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

Accolades and awards

2025
2024
  • Trellis Art Fund
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
  • Honorable 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
  • Best Experimental Film at BlackStar Film Festival, The Giverny Document
  • Top Grit Award at Indie Grits Film Festival, The Giverny Document
  • Juror Award at Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Giverny Document
2019
2018
2017
2016

Filmography

2023 Quiet As It’s Kept - Writer, director, editor, animator
2019 The Giverny Document - Writer, director, editor, animator
2017The Evidence of Things Not Seen - Director
2015 An Ecstatic Experience - Writer, director, editor, animator
2013 Cakes Da Killa: No Homo - Writer, director, editorCakes Da Killa Goodies Goodies Music Video - Director, editor
2012Women’ s Work - Writer, director, editorDeconstructing Your Mother - Writer, director, editor
2010 Sound Rite - Writer, director, editor

Other work

2016
2015
2012
2008