Arthur Jafa is an artist, director, editor, and award-winning cinematographer. His renowned work Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2016) is a compilation of found footage set to Kanye West’s gospel-inspired hip-hop track “Ultralight Beam.” The meticulously edited seven-minute montage surveys African American identity and black experience through a vast spectrum of imagery, including well-known pictures from the civil rights era, recent scenes of police brutality, and iconic clips of extraordinary athleticism. For The White Album, Jafa shifts his lens to white experience, combining imagery from a wide array of sources, from music videos to confessionals posted to YouTube, to produce a trenchant examination of race relations in the United States. Jafa received the 2019 Golden Lion award for best artist in the Venice Biennale for The White Album. 

Just Futures: Black Quantum Futurism, Arthur Jafa, and Martine Syms​, curated by T.J. Demos, is on view at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery January 19- March 19, 2022. With artworks by Black Quantum Futurism, Arthur Jafa, and Martine Syms, Just Futures highlights poignant creative experiments in futurity and justice, directed at emancipatory worlds-to-come. 

Film courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. The screening is hosted by the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, Center for Creative Ecologies, and The Humanities Institute.

Visitors must be in compliance with Covid-19 protocols. Please complete a symptom check before or upon arrival.