Mariah Garnett

Biography

Mariah Garnett mixes documentary, narrative, and experimental filmmaking practices to make work that accesses existing people and communities beyond her immediate experience. Using source material that ranges from found text to her own father, Garnett often inserts herself into the films, creating cinematic allegories that codify and locate identity. 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 was named a Guggenheim fellow in Film & Video in 2019. She holds an MFA from Calarts in Film/Video and a BA from Brown University in American Civilization. Recent solo exhibitions include a new commission at CAM Houston, a 10-year survey show at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and her exhibiting gallery, Commonwealth + Council. Garnett’s work has screened and exhibited internationally at venues including The New Museum, The New York Film Festival, The London Film Festival, Hot Docs, CPH:DOX, REDCAT, MoCA (LA), Metropolitan Arts Centre (Tate Belfast) and the 2014 Made in LA Hammer Biennial. She has received awards from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation (2015), California Community Fund (2014), and Artadia Los Angeles (2016). She lives and works in Los Angeles and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at UCSD.