Arthur Jafa

b. 1960

American visual artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa was born in Mississippi in 1960. He studied architecture and film at Howard University and made his cinematic debut as Director of Photography for Julie Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust, which won him best cinematographer at the Sundance Film Festival.

Jafa’s multidisciplinary practice spans film and installations to lecture-performances and happenings that interrogate dominant cultural assumptions about identity and race. His work collages images and ideas taken from history, fine art and popular culture to explore how one might identify and develop a Black visual aesthetic equal to the “power, beauty and alienation” of Black music in American culture.

@anamibia