Arthur Jafa Love is the Message, the Message is Death

The Hidden Pulse in collaboration with M+

Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death, an emotionally charged moving image portrait of contemporary African-American identity. The screening is followed by an in-depth conversation between Arthur Jafa, and artist and Artistic Director of 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Brook Andrew.

Set to Kanye West’s anthemic, gospel-infused song “Ultralight Beam”, Jafa’s acclaimed seven-minute film essays and celebrates a tumultuous century of African-American history and culture. In the process, he invokes everyone from Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Coltrane, to Nina Simone, Beyoncé, Michael Jordan, and The Notorious B.I.G.

Jafa first rose to prominence as the cinematographer on Julie Dash’s groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust (1991). He has since shot films for Spike Lee and Stanley Kubrick, and most recently directed music videos for Solange and Jay-Z. His work has been collected by museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and The Smithsonian.  

In collaboration with M+, West Kowloon Cultural District

Image: Arthur Jafa, Love is the message, the message is death (2016). Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York/Rome.