Arthur Jafa, visual emblem of African-American vindication

October 16, 2020 at 12:46 p.m.
'My little Buddha' (2018) by Arthur Jafa. PHOTO: artsy.net
'My little Buddha' (2018) by Arthur Jafa. PHOTO: artsy.net

 

African-American representations in art and the media have changed since the work of Arthur Jaffa (1960, Tulepo, Mississippi), polymath artist, cinematographer and theorist of the black culture.

He frequently asks the question: “How can visual media, such as objects, still and moving images, transmit power, beauty and alienation equivalents embedded in the forms of the black music in American culture? " to create.

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Winner of Golden Lion 2019 for best artist at the Venice Art Biennale, Jafa has collaborated with Spike Lee, Jay Z, Solange and several other artists.

Jafa has worked as a cinematographer on audiovisual deliveries and has made documentaries of different personalitiesas Malcolm X, Audre LordeWEB Du Bois.

 

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According to the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, over three decades Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artifacts, and events that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of being black.

His work is present in the collections of different museums in addition to the Museum of Modern Art from New York, including the Metropolitan Art Museum, TATEMuseum, Smithsonian Museum of American Art, etc.

One of the major references when reviewing the work of Jafa is the great accumulation of books and archives, formed from his childhood, replete with an extensive collection of images from magazines and books.

Collection described by the newspaper The New York Times as "a kind of visual lexicon of diasporic blackness, including fashion photographs, photographs of athletes and celebrities, superhero magazine art, and ethnographic images."

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