Mariah Garnett

About the Artist

Born 1980 in Portland, Maine

Mariah Garnett examines how film locates and systematizes definitions of identity. Garnett does this through a deeply personal lens, sometimes explicitly weaving her own subjectivity as a queer filmmaker into the fabric of the narrative as a performer/actor.

Her 20-minute 16mm film Encounters I May or May Not Have Had with Peter Berlin (2012) is equal parts self-portrait and biopic. Featuring audio from a recorded interview with Peter Berlin, the film attempts to approximate Garnett’s relationship to the history of the 1970s gay sex icon. As Garnett inhabits the filmmaker’s signature manner of style and dress, she presents a film that galvanizes the kind of gender misidentification that is a consistent point of interest throughout her practice.