Tag Archives: Arthur Jafa

FRIDA ORUPABO

The official-artistic career of Frida Orupabo developed out of the digital world of algorithms: she was working as a social worker for sex workers and victims forced into prostitution when Arthur Jafa came across her Instagram account @nemiepeba three years ago. It is certainly not a convenient aesthetic that operates Orupabo’s feed and that ultimately led her to the Venice Biennale in 2019, but rather a relentless confrontation with omnipresent historical and simultaneously contemporary sociological problems: gender, racism, post-colonialism, violence, identity. Since 2013 the Norwegian-Nigerian artist has collected almost archivally authentic visual evidence distributed in popular media, amongst them photographic and film records of colonial violence and images of women.*

A show of recent work by Orupabo is on view in Vienna through the end of this week.

FRIDA ORUPABO*

Through January 9.

Koenig2 by robbygreif

Margaretenstrasse 5, Vienna.

Frida Orupabo, Koenig2 by robbygreif, October 22, 2020–January 9, 2021, from top: Untitled, 2019, fine art print on Hahnemühle PhotoRag baryta paper; Untitled, 2019 (detail), video installation, looped; Untitled, 2018, framed pigment print on acid-free semigloss cotton paper; Untitled, 2018, collage with paper pins mounted on cardboard; Untitled, 2019, video installation, looped. Images © Frida Orupabo, courtesy of the artist and Koenig2 by robbygreif.

TORKWASE DYSON — PLANTATIONOCENE, ACT II

Deja Smith, Arthur Jafa, and Gaika are featured in I SEE YOU ACROSS THAT WATER—Act II of Torkwase Dyson’s performance-sculptural piece I CAN DRINK THE DISTANCE: PLANTATIONOCENE IN TWO ACTS—co-presented this week by Performa and Pace as part of the gallery’s inaugural Pace Live program.

I SEE YOU ACROSS THAT WATER

Friday, November 22, at 8 pm.

Pace Live

540 West 25th Street, seventh floor, New York City.

Torkwase Dyson, I Can Drink the Distance: Plantationocene in Two Acts, 2019, performance and installation images (top and below) courtesy and © the artists, the photographer, and Pace. Torkwase Dyson, Nautical Disk, 2018, photographs (portrait of Dyson, second from top, and installation and performance, above) by Gabe Souza. Images courtesy and © the artists, the photographer, and the Colby Museum of Art and Lunder Institute.

SAIDIYA HARTMAN AND ARTHUR JAFA

Join Saidiya Hartman—author of the new book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments—and Arthur Jafa at the Hammer for a public conversation about their work.

Jafa’s new exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm opens later this month.

SAIDIYA HARTMAN and ARTHUR JAFA in conversation

Thursday, June 6, at 7:30 pm.

Hammer Museum

10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

From top: Saidiya Hartman, courtesy of the author and Columbia University; Arthur Jafa, Apex, 2018, Luma, Arles, installation views (2); Arthur Jafa, courtesy of the artist.

FELIX AND FRIEZE LOS ANGELES

Sales are good, tickets are selling out, events are full, and the sun is shining—although a brief shower is forecast for midday Sunday—so the inaugural edition of Frieze Los Angeles should be followed by many more.

We hope Felix returns, too. Co-founded by Morán Morán brothers Al and Mills and collector Dean Valentine, it’s an intimate fair headquartered in Hollywood.

FELIX

Through Sunday, February 17.

Hollywood Roosevelt

7000 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles.

An Arthur Jafa edition of Name That Tune has been added to today’s Frieze Talks, and the fair will close on Sunday with Miranda July and Maggie Nelson in conversation.

When you’re out on the Paramount studio backlot in the Frieze Projects section, stop by the Sqirl/Acid-Free space for Sqirl Away to-go items from the Los Feliz restaurant as well as a selection of art books and periodicals, including Liz Craft’s …my life in the sunshine—published by DoPe Press—and the new print issue of PARIS LA.

FRIEZE LOS ANGELES

Through Sunday, February 17.

Paramount Pictures Studios

5515 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.

From top: Ken Price, Return to LA, 1990, courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks (Frieze Los Angeles); Florian Morlat, collage, courtesy of the artist and The Pit (Frieze Los Angeles); Jessi Reaves installation at Felix, courtesy the artist and Bridget Donahue, New York; Kristen Morgin, Jennifer Aniston’s Used Book Sale (detail), ceramic, courtesy the artist and Marc Selwyn Fine Art (Felix); David Hockney, Peter Showering, 1976, C print, courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks (Frieze Los Angeles); Nan Goldin, Blue, 2016, courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman (Frieze Los Angeles).

ARTHUR JAFA IN CONVERSATION

“I have a very simple mantra and it’s this: I want to make black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of black music… The larger preoccupation is how do we force cinema to respond to the existential, political, and spiritual dimensions of who we are as a people.” — Arthur Jafa

To open his new exhibition in Berkeley—ARTHUR JAFA/MATRIX 272, which features a new work The White Album (above)—Jafa will be joined by Stephen Best for a conversation about the politics of aesthetics and the turn toward “Afropessimism.”

 

ARTHUR JAFA AND STEPHEN BEST IN CONVERSATION

Wednesday, December 12, at 6 pm.

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

2155 Center Street, Berkeley.

Above: Arthur JafaThe White Album (still), 2018. Continuous video projection; color, sound; approx. 40 min. Commissioned by BAMPFA. © Arthur Jafa, 2018.

Below: Arthur JafaMonster, 1989. Digital c-print. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. (Jafa is the subject of this photograph.)

Images courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York and Rome.