Arthur Jafa Opens Largest Survey at New Museum NYC

Summary

• The New Museum in New York will open I Am Tony, a two-floor survey dedicated to artist Arthur Jafa come September
• The exhibition will feature early, recent, and new artworks, including large-scale videos, paintings, film installations, photographs, and sculptures

With his MoMA mixtape coming to a close, New York hasn’t had enough of Arthur Jafa. But lucky for us, the New Museum is stepping in. Following the building-wide New Humans takeover for its hotly anticipated reopening, next on deck for the Bowery museum will be I Am Tony, Jafa’s largest survey yet.

The exhibition, opening September 24, will unravel over two floors in a mix of works, new and beloved, with a particular focus on his filmic evolution, pairing some of his earliest films beside and more recent pieces — paintings, video installations, sculptures, and photographs. From details so far, viewers can also expect several of Jafa’s seminal films, such as “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” (2016), soundtracked to Ye’s “Ultralight Beam,” and his 2019 Golden Lion winner, “The White Album” (2019).

Jafa has spent the last nearly 40 years wrestling with the beauty and alienation of “Black being” in America across visual form. From cult-classic films to TikToks, comic book characters to the historymakers — as seen in the titular nod to the pioneering jazz drummer, Tony Williams — Jafa captures such rhythms and essence across mediums, placing the nation’s violent racial histories against the rise of Black music, entertainment, and art within the wider American cultural landscape.

Trained as a cinematographer and architect, Jafa is an artist of a generation. He’s celebrated both within and beyond the contemporary art world with collaborations with Spike Lee (as director of photography on Crooklyn) and Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut) under his belt, alongside a number of music videos for the likes of Solange, Ye, and JAY -Z.

Check out the New Museum’s website for more information on I Am Tony.

New Museum
235 Bowery,
New York, NY 10002