February 11 - March 11, 2023
Solo Exhibition; You Smell Like Outside...
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY, USA
For her second exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, Ja’Tovia Gary has premiered a new film, Quiet As It’s Kept, and a sculpture from her ongoing Citational Ethics series. The artist continues her practice of interrogating and re-contextualizing multiple archives, concerning herself with the power and responsibility of language and the radical possibilities of narrative. The exhibition title You Smell Like Outside… is a Black Southern phrase that foregrounds the artist’s specific cultural origins with discursive traditions that invoke an interior knowledge. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s 1993 Nobel Laureate lecture, Gary attempts to heighten the contradictions between a living and a dead language. Notions of domesticity, interior and exterior, and the conflict between perception and being perceived are explored in the show.
Quiet As It’s Kept, 2023
single channel video installation, 26 minutes, 16:9 aspect ratio, stereo sound; Admiral refrigerator with dried marigolds; 16 diner chairs; dimensions variable
Photo: Steven Probert