Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death
Arthur Jafa
31 May - 12 July
E-WERK will present Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death (2016) by internationally acclaimed artist Arthur Jafa in its Turbine Hall. The work consists of footage shot by Jafa, a visual artist with a long career as a cinematographer and film director, as well as clips sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and citizen videos, much of it downloaded from the Internet. These images traverse the twentieth century, focusing on the lives of Bipoc people set against the backdrop of systemic racism and white supremacism. This work is a powerful meditation on racism and Black pain, creativity and Black resilience and will be shown for the first time in Brandenburg.
About Arthur Jafa
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) is an artist, filmmaker and cinematographer. Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artefacts and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. Underscoring the many facets of Jafa’s practice is a recurring question: how can visual media, such as objects, static and moving images, transmit the equivalent “power, beauty and alienation” embedded within forms of Black music in US culture? Jafa’s films have garnered acclaim at the Los Angeles, New York and Black Star Film Festivals and his artwork is represented in celebrated collections worldwide. Select recent institutional solo exhibitions include MCA Chicago, Illinois (2024); OGR Torino, Italy (2022); LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2022); Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland (2021); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebæk, Denmark (2021); Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2020); Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Canada (2020); and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2019). In 2019, he received the Golden Lion for the Best Participant of the 58th Venice Biennale “May You Live in Interesting Times.”
