1. Arthur Jafa is an American video artist and cinematographer.
17 Facts About Arthur Jafa
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Arthur Jafa's parents were both educators and Jafa was raised Catholic.
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Arthur Jafa studied architecture and film at Howard University, including with professor Dr Abiyi Ford, before moving to Atlanta, Georgia.
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The science fiction programs Arthur Jafa watched as a child have informed his artistic practice as an adult, as seen in his self-portrait LeRage.
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Arthur Jafa's work is inspired by his interest in jazz musician Miles Davis.
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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.
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Arthur Jafa has worked as a cinematographer with directors Julie Dash and Spike Lee.
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Arthur Jafa himself has connected the ethos of the work with his Catholic roots and Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.
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Arthur Jafa has worked on a number of music videos and was the director of photography on videos for Solange's Don't Touch My Hair and Cranes in the Sky.
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Arthur Jafa was included in the 2017 ArtReview Power 100 list.
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Arthur Jafa co-founded TNEG along with Malik Hassan 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".
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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.
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Arthur Jafa was awarded the Golden Lion for best artist at the 2019 Venice Biennale for The White Album.
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Arthur Jafa is currently working on a project that is a feature film that focuses on how black music has greatly influenced American culture.
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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.
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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.
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Dash and Arthur Jafa married in 1983 and had a daughter, N'Zinga in 1984.