Barnes Cinema: Ja’Tovia Gary Retrospective
Saturday, July 11, 1 – 4pm
Still from Ja’Tovia Gary’s An Ecstatic Experience (2015)
$15; $10 members and students
About the Event
Today’s program features three films directed by Ja’Tovia Gary, one of the artists featured in our Freedom Dreams exhibition: Cakes da Killa: No Homo (2013), An Ecstatic Experience (2015), and The Giverny Document (2019). Spanning portraiture, meditation, and experimental documentary, these works reflect Gary’s distinctive use of archival materials, performance, and formal innovation. The screening will be followed by a short lecture and conversation with writer and editor Niela Orr.
This screening is part of a special three-part series curated by Maori Karmael Holmes of BlackStar Projects in conjunction with Freedom Dreams. The exhibition brings together film, video, and installations that invite viewers to engage deeply with the memories, dreams, and histories of Black Americans.
Tickets include admission to the Barnes collection and Freedom Dreams.
About the Films
2013
Cakes da Killa: No Homo
Directed by Ja’Tovia Gary
A portrait of an artist. Born Rashard Bradshaw, Cakes da Killa is a young up-and-coming rapper and an out and proud gay man. With provocative lyrics that explore sexuality and gender politics, he’s not your run-of-the-mill rapper, but he just might be your new favorite.
Duration: 13 min.
2015
An Ecstatic Experience
Directed by Ja’Tovia Gary
A meditative invocation on transcendence as a means of restoration that weaves together narratives and sounds from archival media.
Duration: 6 min.
2019
The Giverny Document
Directed by Ja’Tovia Gary
Filmed on location in Harlem and in Claude Monet’s historic gardens in Giverny, France, The Giverny Document is a multitextured cinematic poem that meditates on the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. Gary unleashes an arsenal of techniques and materials, including direct animation on archival 16mm film and woman-on-the-street interviews, to explore the creative virtuosity of Black femme performance figures while interrogating the histories of those bodies as spaces of forced labor and commodified production.
Duration: 41 min.
About the Artist
Ja’Tovia Gary is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist utilizing documentary, avant-garde video art, sculpture, and installation. Her work focuses on a Black feminist subjectivity and draws from public media and private archives to disrupt notions of objectivity and neutrality in nonfiction storytelling. Gary aims to unmask power and its influence on how individuals perceive and create reality. Her film Quiet as It’s Kept (2023) is on view in Freedom Dreams.
Speaker
Niela Orr
Orr is a writer from Philadelphia. In addition to being a columnist for The Baffler, she is a deputy editor at The Believer and a contributing editor of The Organist, an experimental arts-and-culture podcast and radio show from KCRW and McSweeney’s.
Curator
Maori Karmael Holmes
Holmes is the chief executive and artistic officer of BlackStar Projects and the co-curator of Freedom Dreams. She has organized programs at Anthology Film Archives and the Whitney Museum, as well as exhibitions at ICA and Pearlstein Gallery.
Go Further
Daily Gallery Talks
Every day, our gallery specialists offer talks about the Barnes collection. Learn more about our history, founder, and collection.
Deep Dive: Cézanne’s Still Life
An in-depth discussion about Still Life with Penn MA student Nina Huang. Free with admission; Room 8
Lecture & Book Signing: Soutine with Celeste Marcus
Author Celeste Marcus discusses her new book Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art.