Mariah Garnett

Mariah Garnett (she/her) mixes documentary, narrative, and experimental filmmaking practices to make work that accesses existing people and communities beyond her immediate experience. Her films deconstruct the conventional hierarchy between filmmaker and subject, a mode that has historically been the purview of directors who possess economic, racial, and gender privilege. By including her own image, Garnett positions queerness in relation to subject matter that, on the surface, may seem disconnected from LGBT identity. The works simultaneously acknowledge a natural human desire for contact with others and the legacies of abuse and “othering” that have surrounded the mediation of that desire through history. In this way, Garnett creates a space in her films where more than one thing can be true.

Garnett is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Film/Video and holds an MFA from Calarts and a BA from Brown University. Recent solo exhibitions include Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Commonwealth + Council, a 10 year survey of her work at the LA Municipal Art Gallery, and Sundance Film Festival, 2021. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Forum, Bomb among others and has screened and exhibited internationally at The New Museum, Brooklyn Academy Of Music (BAM), REDCAT, Made in LA (Hammer Museum Biennial), The Metropolitan Arts Centre (Tate Belfast), CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, NY Film Festival, and BFI London. She is an Assistant Professor of Media at UC San Diego, and lives and works in Los Angeles.