Slopex — Arthur Jafa

Arthur Jafa is one of the most significant contemporary artists practicing today. Over several decades he has constructed a compelling body of work which defies categorization. SloPEX (2022) is a slowed-down, modified iteration of Jafa’s masterpiece APEX (2013). Its sound fills the entire exhibition space and the radical contrast of images, and complexity of associations, are daunting and surprising. Powerful and lyrical at the same time, his practice combines a profoundly unsettling blend of images and histories from diverse contexts and backgrounds. Bringing together affective memory that touches on matters such as the history of the United States of America, 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 of blackness.

Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) is an artist, filmmaker, and cinematographer. Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artefacts and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. In 2019, he received the Golden Lion for the Best Participant of the 58th Venice Biennale “May You Live in Interesting Times.”