Arthur Jafa

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Arthur Jafa in Prague, January 2019

Arthur Jafa Fielder (born November 30, 1960 in Tupelo , Mississippi ) is an American visual artist , cameraman and video artist . His work is exhibited in well-known international cultural institutions.

life and work

At a young age he collected pictures from different contexts, time periods and historical connections and put them together in albums. He still uses this technology today with modern technical tools. He was particularly influenced by science fiction films and the music of Miles Davis , the intonation of which he describes as "lush and strict" and which comes very close to his idea of ​​aesthetics.

Jafa was born into the home of two educators . He grew up in Clarksdale at a time when racial segregation was still very pronounced. From 1978 to 1982 he studied architecture and film at Howard University before moving to Atlanta . Jafa is married to filmmaker Julie Dash , with whom he made the 1991 film Daughters of the Dust and for which he received the Best Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival .

Many of his works are in the possession of well-known museums, such as his video essay Love is the Message, the Message is Death from 2017, which is presented by four institutions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and the High Museum of Art . The seven-and-a-half-minute video shows collaged film sequences of the everyday reality of African-Americans for Kanye West's song Ultralight Beam : protests and police violence, celebrations, pop events, trance and dance as well as freedom arguments. In 2018 he released The White Album , in which he investigated whiteness in the USA in about 40 minutes with the help of media finds .

In Europe, exhibitions of his works were shown in 2017 in the Serpentine Gallery in London, in 2018 in the Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin , the Rudolfinum in Prague and in 2019 in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm .

Web links

Commons : Arthur Jafa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nate Freeman: The Messenger: How a Video by Arthur Jafa Became a Worldwide Sensation — and Described America to Itself. In: Art news , March 27, 2018
  2. ↑ Biography Arthur Jafa . Report on an exhibition at the Moderna Museet
  3. ↑ Dreams are Colder than Death: Screening & Talk with Arthur Jafa . Barnard Center for Research on Women, New York, 2016
  4. ↑ Linda Janet Holmes: A Joyous Revolt: Toni Cade Bambara, Writer and Activist . ABC-CLIO 2014, ISBN 978-03130-5077-0 , page 162
  5. ^ Arthur Jafa Awards . IMDb
  6. ↑ Helen Molesworth : Arthur Jafa: Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death. MOCA, moca.org on Internet Archive , March 6, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Jafa, Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American video artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Tupelo , Mississippi