15 Facts About Arthur Jafa

Arthur Jafa is an American video artist and cinematographer.

Arthur Jafa's parents were both educators and Jafa was raised Catholic.

Arthur Jafa studied architecture and film at Howard University before moving to Atlanta, Georgia.

The science fiction programs Arthur Jafa watched as a child has informed his artistic practice as an adult, as seen in his self portrait "LeRage".

Arthur Jafa's work is inspired by his interest in jazz musician Miles Davis.

Arthur Jafa has exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Julia Stoschek Collection, as well as many others.

Arthur Jafa has worked as a cinematographer with directors Julie Dash and Spike Lee.

Arthur Jafa himself has connected the ethos of the work with his Catholic roots and Gian Lorenzo Bernini's "Ecstasy of Saint Teresa".

Arthur Jafa co-founded TNEG along with Malik Sayeed, a "motion picture studio whose goal is to create a black cinema as culturally, socially, and economically central to the 21st century as was black music to the 20th century".

In 2018, Arthur Jafa released the approximately forty minute-long video essay entitled The White Album, which uses found video clips from CCTV, cell phones, documentaries, and more to explore whiteness and racism in the United States of America.

Arthur Jafa was awarded the Golden Lion for best artist at the 2019 Venice Biennale for The White Album.

Arthur Jafa is currently working on a project that is a feature film that focuses on how black music has greatly influenced American culture.

In 2023, Arthur Jafa was nominated for the Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize for his 2022 exhibition "Live Evil" at LUMA Arles in Arles, France.

Arthur Jafa's work was featured alongside fellow Prize nominees Bieke Depoorter, Samuel Fosso, and Frida Orupabo at the Photographers' Gallery, London, which opened in March 2023.

Dash and Arthur Jafa married in 1983 and had a daughter, N'Zinga in 1984.