Garrett Bradley

Garrett Bradley is an American artist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker whose interdisciplinary practice spans narrative, documentary, and experimental forms to explore themes of race, class, familial intimacy, and the sociopolitical histories of the United States. Based in New Orleans, Louisiana, Bradley’s work engages the moving image as both a formal and conceptual space—merging archival research with strategies of reenactment, observation, and performance, and rooting the sociopolitical in personal and physical experience. Her collaborative approach to filmmaking takes multiple forms: deep dives into historical archives, extended dialogue with the communities and individuals she lives among, and an attentiveness to the minute textures of everyday life. Bradley’s films embrace modes of working and of representing history that blur the boundaries between traditional notions of narrative and documentary cinema, exploring the space between fact and fiction with rigor and lyrical intimacy. Her explorations of the social, economic, and racial politics of everyday life—its joys, pleasures, and pains—are rendered on screen with both formal precision and deep human tenderness.

Bradley received a BA from Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA (2007), and an MFA from UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2012). She has been recognized with major awards and fellowships including the Prix de Rome from the American Academy in Rome (2019), and was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2015). In 2020, her debut feature-length documentary Time received international acclaim, garnering over fifty nominations—including an Academy Award nomination—and securing twenty wins, among them a Peabody Award and Best Director in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where she became the first Black woman to receive the honor. Subsequent recognition has included the Arts and Letters Award for Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2022), the Eye Art & Film Prize (2023), a United Artists Fellowship (2024), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2024), and a MacArthur Fellowship (2025), recognizing her as a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Award.

She is also the co-founder of Creative Council, an artist-led afterschool initiative supported by the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC), which champions local, public high school students in developing competitive college art portfolios.

Recent and notable presentations include Revolutions at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (2025); Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody at MOCA, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2022-23); Just Above Midtown: 1974 to the Present, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA (2022); 2022 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY, USA (2022); Toni Morrison’s Black Book at David Zwiner Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2022); Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America at New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2021); Projects: Garrett Bradley at Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA (2020-21); Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody at Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX, USA (2019) touring to The Momentary, Crystal Bridges, AR, (2021), August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh, PA, (2022) and MOCA, Los Angeles, CA (2022), all USA; Shirin Neshat + Garrett Bradley at The Broad @ Array, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2019); Garrett Bradley’s America: A Journey Through Race and Time at Brooklyn Academy of Music New York, NY, USA (2019); Bodies of Knowledge at New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, USA (2019); and the Whitney Biennial, New York, NY, USA (2019).

Bradley’s writing and visual essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, Artforum, Frieze, BOMB, and e-flux, and her work has been featured in exhibition catalogues and critical anthologies such as Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2019), Devotion (MIT Press and Lisson Gallery, 2023), and Revolutions (Eye Filmmuseum, 2025). Recent projects include a facsimile edition of The Harlem Book of the Dead, co-edited with James Hoff of Primary Information and released in fall 2025.

Recent, current and forthcoming projects

'Garrett Bradley, Revolutions', The Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (14 June — 7 September 2025)

'Just Above Midtown: 1974 to the Present', The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA (9 Oct 2022 – 18 Feb 2023)

'Garrett Bradley: American Rhapsody', The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, CA, USA (10 Sep 2022 – 19 Feb 2023)