Tuesday December 2, 2025
Arthur Jafa (American, born Tupelo, Mississippi, 1960)
still from Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death, 2016, Single-channel digital video, color, sound, 7 min., 25 sec.
“In Jafa’s Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death (2016), viewers encounter myriad visual elements, including photographs of civil rights leaders and politicians, a video clip of tennis player Serena Williams Crip Walking on the court, and camera phone footage of police brutality against Black people—all interspersed with close-ups of the sun. Though the sequences of images seem to defy logic, the frames are cut and spliced rhythmically, producing a choreographed procession of anti-Black violence, mourning, celebration, and intimacy—all inhabiting the immensity and power of the sun.
Arthur Jafa’s eye continually seeks out, and draws into focus, unlikely and uncanny companions. Through his work he invites viewers to look along with him, not turning away but bearing witness to a chorus of beauty and terror that, for Jafa, define the richness of Black life.” from MoMA’s website
“Artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa has been assembling his substantial catalogue of film and imagery since the 1980s, serving as a rich repository and springboard for still images, videos, paintings and sculptures that celebrate and reflect Black life in America and beyond. Jafa, who studied architecture and filmmaking, choreographs both cinematic and physical space in his visceral, hallucinatory films and expansive installations. He sequences and forces into dialogue fragmented extracts from disparate visuals, including social media videos, low-resolution television recordings, celebrity interviews, raw footage of police encounters, cartoons and video game content. Jafa explores and approximates icons, brutalities and aesthetics associated with Black culture, the radical power of Afro-American music and the prevalence of a white gaze in Western cinema. He forms astute juxtapositions and sensory experiences that heighten emotive responses to the real events and histories portrayed, encouraging witness, empathy and confrontation.” from Sadie Coles HQ website
*Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death is in faith’s Top 3 artworks ever made by an artist.