Mariah Garnett: Other & Father

About

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 ranging from found text to iconic gay porn stars, the artist often inserts herself into the works, creating cinematic allegories that codify and locate identity. 

Other & Father is a new experimental documentary exploring Garnett’s relationship with her estranged father who originally hails from Northern Ireland. Using a variety of media, the work deals with representation, the construction of memory and family lore, and the parallels in the ways cities – particularly those affected by conflict - shape their own histories, mythologies and identities. In this piece Garnett explores, unravels, and reinterprets personal and political histories carved out in Belfast in the early 1970s, superimposing her own queer experience onto a city which to her is both familiar and strange.