Ja'Tovia Gary Quotes
born 1984 United States
Ja'Tovia Gary (born 1984) is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist working across documentary, avant-garde video art, sculpture, and installation.
- United States
- Artists
- Film directors
Also known as: Ja’Tovia Gary
Random Ja'Tovia Gary quote
16 quotes
Using what you have to make what you want, I’m obsessed with the notion that the idea of the thing outweighs the materials.
If experimental wasn’t marginalized and diminished, I would have no problem being called experimental.
I feel like that’s very much a bedrock for a lot of the work that I do now.
I wanted to be in charge of directing the story, creating the narrative. It was very much about snatching that bag.
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.
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’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.
There was no gym, there was enhanced improve.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.