Arthur Jafa: Live Evil - by Flora Katz & Vassilis Oikonomopouloss (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An expansive survey of video, installation and more from Arthur Jafa, whose practice is "a counterpunch to anyone who wants to put people of color in their place" (Wes Hill)

Published with LUMA Arles.

Over several decades, American filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa has constructed a compelling body of work that defies categorization. Both powerful and lyrical, his practice combines a profoundly unsettling blend of images and histories. Bringing together affective memories that touch on US history, violence, repression, modalities of survival and how these exist in the production and dissemination of images, music, sound and time-based media, Jafa reflects on the ontology of race and Blackness. This richly illustrated catalog reproduces key works from Jafa's wide-ranging oeuvre and explores the philosophical, historical and artistic implications of his practice, featuring essays and a series of conversations between Jafa and key practitioners working in the fields of cinema, arts and theory.
Arthur Jafa (born 1960) grew up in Mississippi, where his lifelong fascination with found imagery manifested in his childhood hobby of assembling binders of photographs culled from various sources. As a cinematographer and director of photography, Jafa has collaborated with Stanley Kubrick, Solange Knowles and Spike Lee, among many others. His work on Julie Dash's 1991 film Daughters of the Dust won him the Best Cinematography award at Sundance. At the 2019 Venice Biennale, he was awarded the Golden Lion for The White Album. Jafa lives and works in Los Angeles.

Review Quotes

Featuring a rich collection of images, essays and conversations with artists, writers and theorists including Saidiya Hartman, Peter Saville and Nathaniel Mackey, the book offers invaluable insight into Jafa's singular practice. It reveals a mind that is at once encyclopaedic and kaleidoscopic, spiralling through the cosmos to traverse both heaven and hell.--Elodie Saint-Louis "Dazed"

Arthur Jafa's work in film, sculpture and installation explores Black being with an unflinching eye for systemic and historic inequity and violence and an exuberant harnessing of disparate manifestations of Black--and particularly African-American--culture.--Ben Luke "The Art Newspaper"