Joy Amina Garnett is an artist and writer in Los Angeles whose work explores forgotten histories through archival materials. Her recent projects draw on the life and work of her late maternal grandfather, Egyptian poet and bee scientist Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892-1955). Her writings have appeared in Arab Urbanism Magazine (forthcoming in 2023); Evergreen Review (New York); Rusted Radishes (Beirut); Full Blede (Los Angeles); Stat®rec (New York/Berlin); Virilio and Visual Culture (Edinburgh University Press); Ibraaz (Kamal Lazaar Foundation); Ping-Pong (Henry Miller Memorial Library, Big Sur); The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook (powerHouse Books, 2016); and Cultural Entanglement in the Pre-Independence Arab World: Arts, Thought and Literature (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury 2020). She is completing a family memoir.
Garnett’s paintings have been exhibited at the FLAG Art Foundation, MoMA PS1, Whitney Museum, Artists Space, Smack Mellon, White Columns (NY), the Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland (OR), Boston University Art Gallery, National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC), and the Witte Zaal (Ghent, Belgium). She has received grants from Anonymous Was a Woman, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Wellcome Trust (London, UK), and the Chipstone Foundation (Milwaukee, WI). Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Academy of Sciences, Altria, and The West Collection (Oaks, PA). Garnett is the Art Director of Evergreen Review.
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Traveling Exhibition:
ALHAMDU | MUSLIM FUTURISM
Rubenstein Arts Center
Duke University, Durham, NC
August 16 – September 18, 2022
Traveling exhibition premiering at the Rubenstein Arts Center, presented by Duke Arts in collaboration with Duke Islamic Studies Center. More info.
ARTISTS: Abbas Rattani, Abdullah Qureshi, Ahad Mahmood, Aisha Jemila, Amine Naima, Anum Awan, Driss Chaoui, Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Jameel Paulin, Joy Amina Garnett, Matthew Brooks, Mélika Hashemi, Mounir Fatmi, Nabi H. Ali, Roya Ahmadi, Saba Taj, Safiya Zerrougui, Safwat Saleem, Saks Afridi, Samira Idroos, Sanya Dosani, Sara Alfageeh, Sarah-Mecca Abdourahman, Shahzia Sikander, Shimul Chowdhury, Tijay Mohammed, Yasmeen Abedifard, Yussef Cole & Saniya Ahmed, Yusuf Siddiquee, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Writing:
Lesser Meats, Two Coats of Paint, June 14, 2022
Excerpt from a memoir-in-progress.
Life Drawing, 2022
(earlier version published in Evergreen Review, S/S 2022)
Leaving New York, 2020
An ode to a vanished New York by Evergreen’s Art Editor. Joy Garnett, you make me wish that I’d lived through your New York with you, living for “the odd moment, the expressive gesture.” Always interwoven with a lost city are the lost people, the lovers, the neighbors, the artists, the diners, the cars. And when you conclude that you are not sad at all to leave New York, what New York has become, you stab me in the heart. —Jee Leong Koh on Leaving New York; (earlier version published in Evergreen Review, S/S 2022)
The Lost Narratives of A.Z. Abushady, Poet and Bee Master, [PDF] Dec. 2020.
In: Cultural Entanglement in the Pre-Independence Arab World: Arts, Thought, and Literature, edited by Anthony Gorman and Sarah Irving (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, Dec. 2020). This book examines the ways in which non-Arabic cultural influences interacted with the rich, complex and sometimes conflictual environment of the Arab world in the pre-independence era.
The sea takes up residence in all parts of the city, Rusted Radishes, Issue 8, 2019
The theme of this issue, “Sea Change,” as an extraordinary shift in perspective and an allusion to our environment, harkens back to its original rendering in The Tempest.
Archival projects:
Joy Garnett | studio 
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