For over three decades, Arthur Jafa (*1960) has produced imagery that reflects and dissects the realities, constructions, and influence of Blackness in contemporary culture – in America and beyond. Through strategies of appropriation as well as lyrical manipulations of industrial and other found materials, his films, paintings, sculptures and installations bring together disparate sources, revealing poignant gaps and connections between them through the power of juxtaposition, and asking viewers to witness alongside him the history, brutality and beauty of the Black experience.
Right: Richard Prince, Graduation, 2018. Collection of Larry Gagosian © Richard Prince
Arthur Jafa, Richard Prince
Helter Skelter
Fondazione Prada, Venice
Through November 23, 2026
Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince is an exhibition curated by Nancy Spector at Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice, which reveals a creative conversation between the work of two prominent American artists, Arthur Jafa (b. 1960) and Richard Prince (b. 1949), that has never been examined before. Born a decade apart, they share an ethos of lawlessness when it comes to the appropriation and manipulation of images siphoned from movies, pulp novels, comic books, YouTube videos, sci-fi stories, album covers, record sleeves, rock ‘n’ roll posters, first-edition Beat volumes, news reels, celebrity memorabilia, and social-media posts. Trafficking heavily in American popular culture, they expose its grit and grift, while embracing many of its myths and perversions. Both artists chart peculiar topographies specific to the United States: Jafa’s reflecting his identity as an African American man, coupled with a mission to invigorate Black cinema and art; Prince’s hovering between a self-conscious critique of white masculinity and a fascination with the underbelly of the American psyche.
Learn more