Arthur Jafa is an artist, filmmaker, and cinematographer from Tupelo, Mississippi. Over the past three decades, he has developed a dynamic oeuvre of films, artefacts, and happenings that reference the universal and specific articulations of Black being. A recurring question surfaces throughout Jafa’s multifaceted work: How can visual media—whether objects, static or moving images—transmit the equivalent sentiments of “power, beauty, and alienation” that are 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 artworks are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Tate, Studio Museum in Harlem, High Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Stedelijk Museum, Luma Foundation, Perez Art Museum in Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and Julia Stoschek Collection, among others.