April 22: Live Screening and Q&A with Ja’Tovia Gary & Erin Christovale
Wednesday, April 22 at 7pm ET (4pm PT)
Artist Ja’Tovia Gary will speak with Hammer Museum curator Erin Christovale on Wednesday, April 22 at 7pm ET (4pm PT). Co-presented by the Hammer Museum and Paula Cooper Gallery, the discussion will center on Gary’s concurrent exhibitions at both institutions, which are presently closed to the public due to COVID-19. The event will be live-streamed directly on this page and on the Hammer Museum’s website, and will begin with a screening of the artist’s acclaimed film, The Giverny Document (Single Channel), 2019. This program will be recorded; the recording will be posted shortly after the live event.
Organized by Christovale in Los Angeles, “Hammer Projects: Ja’Tovia Gary” opened at the museum on February 2, 2020. The exhibition marks the U.S. premiere of THE GIVERNY SUITE—an immersive, three-channel extension of Gary’s single channel film. Shot on location in Harlem, New York, and in Claude Monet’s historic gardens in Giverny, France, the installation is a multi-textured cinematic poem that meditates on the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. Opened two weeks later, Gary’s inaugural exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, titled “flesh that needs to be loved,” includes the East Coast premiere of THE GIVERNY SUITE, as well as the artist’s first-ever multimedia sculptural installation.
For more information visit hammer.ucla.edu and paulacoopergallery.com and read the articles below.
Ayanna Dozier, “Sound Garden,” Artforum, February 3, 2020. Read here.
Alex Greenberger, “With Her Artful Documentaries and Sculptural Arrays, Ja’Tovia Gary Places Black Women at the Center,” ARTnews, February 21, 2020. Read here.
Martha Schwendender, “What to See Right Now in New York Art Galleries: Ja’Tovia Gary,” The New York Times, March 11, 2020. Read here.
Ja’Tovia Gary is an artist and filmmaker whose work has been screened at festivals, cinemas, and institutions worldwide including Edinburgh International Film Festival, The Whitney Museum, Atlanta Film Festival, MoMa PS1, MoCA Los Angeles, Harvard Film Archives, New Orleans Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and more. Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester. Exhibitions have been presented at the Schomburg Center, NYU Florence, Goldsmiths University, MoCA LA, MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, and ICA Boston. In 2016 Gary participated in the Terra Foundation Summer Residency. She was named a 2019 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2019 Field of Vision Fellow, and a 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Her work has received support from the Sundance Institute and The Jerome Foundation.
Erin Christovale is a Los Angeles-based curator and programmer who currently works as Associate Curator at the Hammer Museum, UCLA. In June 2018 she organized the museum's fourth Made in L.A. biennial with Anne Ellegood. She also leads Black Radical Imagination with Amir George, an experimental film program that has screened both nationally and internationally in spaces such as MoMA PS1, MOCA Los Angeles, and the Museo Taller José Clemente Orozco, among others. Christovale is best known for her work on identity, race and historical legacy. Prior to her appointment at the Hammer Museum, Christovale worked as a curator at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.