MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST

To occupy the venues of art history and introduce new imagery is one of art’s raisons d’être. An image is always an expression of a specific perspective, way of thinking, and present. In her work “The Giverny Suite” (2019), Ja’Tovia Gary shows the extent to which not only images, but also how we see them, are subject to ideological influences. In the iconic landscapes of Claude Monet, Gary stages a collision between idyll and imperialism. Whereas in this total construction of nature, the black female body might appear to be protected from the usual exoticizing gaze, the “négresse” character adapts a transgressive posture in the face of a continued asymmetrical balance of power. In interviews on the streets of Harlem the omnipresent vulnerability is beyond dispute, though the connections created between Black women and girls prove sincere and sustaining.

Images of self-empowerment—for example of Nina Simone during her concert in Montreux or of the Black Panther activist Fred Hampton—clash with film footage of Josephine Baker as a caged bird, shots of drone strikes carried out in Afghanistan under the tenure of Barack Obama with the film sequences Diamond Reynolds took with her cell phone following the fatal shooting of her partner Philando Castile during a police traffic stop in Minnesota. All these many images seem to merge in the question posed by Joseline Hernandez: “Can I live? Can I live? Can I fucking live?“ 

The exhibition at the ZOLLAMT MMK was the first institutional solo exhibition to feature the artist Ja’Tovia Gary in Europe.