AMSTERDAM.- Eye Filmmuseum is presenting the first European solo museum exhibition by US artist and Oscar nominated filmmaker Garrett Bradley. The exhibition invites visitors into her world: a rich blend of engagement and artistic experimentation, in which she critically examines (film) history and image-making from a contemporary perspective. In 2023, Bradley was awarded the Eye Art & Film Prize.

Garrett Bradley explores how images help shape our view of the world. She is particularly interested in the ways America is represented through visual culture. Spanning narrative, documentary, and experimental forms of filmmaking, this exhibition reflects the artist’s turn towards abstraction and the increasingly sculptural nature of her work. Bradley invites us to take a step back and consider how and in what ways looking is socially and culturally informed. In doing so, she points to the pitfalls of representation and unravels the mechanisms that determine how we perceive ourselves and others.

The exhibition Revolutions takes its title from the various forms of revolution present in Garrett Bradley’s work. A revolution can refer to a political shift in power, but also to a cycle, like the Earth rotating on its axis as the days pass. Bradley’s work reveals the revolutionary potential of the everyday – the change that small acts of resistance can bring about. Garrett Bradley – Revolutions is organised by Eye Filmmuseum is close collaboration with Rebecca Matalon, Senior Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Bregtje van der Haak, Director Eye Filmmuseum: “Garrett Bradley creates courageous, visually compelling work, which takes on themes such as racism and exclusion with exceptional energy. Her work takes shape through a blend of diverse and archival media. Her (documentary) films and installations refer to topics including the history of American citizens, the struggle for social justice and the political history of the United States, and make in-depth explorations of human emotions such as rage and sorrow.”

The exhibition is complemented by a publication that combines a comprehensive visual section with stills from the featured projects, alongside a conversation between artist Garrett Bradley and Rebecca Matalon, Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The publication also includes an essay by Vincent van Velsen, Head of Exhibitions at Eye. Designed by Bardhi Haliti, it is a co-publication of Eye Filmmuseum and nai010 publishers, Rotterdam.

Garrett Bradley is an American artist, educator, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose work spans fictional, documentary, and experimental modes of filmmaking to address themes such as race, class, familial relationships and sociopolitical histories within the United States. Bradley lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 2020, Bradley presented her debut feature-length documentary, Time, which was nominated for more than fifty awards—including an Oscar—and won twenty, including the 2020 Peabody Award and the Best Director Award in the US Documentary Competition category at that year’s Sundance Film Festival, making her the first Black woman to receive the award in the history of the festival. Bradley was a 2015 resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and is a recipient of the Prix de Rome (2019), the Arts and Letters Award for Art by the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2022), the Eye Filmmuseum’s Eye Art & Film Prize (2023), the United Artists Fellowship (2024) and a 2024 Guggenheim Award.

Bradley’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2020); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2019); the Momentary, Crystal Bridges, Arkansas (2021); the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh (2022); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2022). Her work is celebrated in collections worldwide.

Bradley co-founded Creative Council, an artist-led afterschool programme aimed at developing strong college art portfolios for students attending public high schools in New Orleans. Creative Council was supported and facilitated through the New Orleans Video Access Center, (NOVAC).

Bradley is co-editing a facsimile edition of The Harlem Book of the Dead, (with James Hoff; scheduled: fall 2025). She is also adapting a feature length film adaptation of Octavia Butler’s seminal 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower.