Arthur JafaAFRO SAXON, 2024Twelve-color screenprint on Coventry Rag Paper13 x 18 3/4 inches (33 x 47.6 cm) Framed: 19 3/4 x 25 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches (50.2 x 64.8 x 3.8 cm)Edition of 50, 6 AP, & 1 PPPrinted by Du-Good Press, New YorkPublished by 52 Walker Lauded for his achievements as a filmmaker and cinematographer as well as a visual artist, Arthur Jafa (b.1960) has developed an incisive, chameleonic practice, through which he seeks to unravel the cultural significance and strictures ascribed in tandem upon Black existence in the Western world. In BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, Jafa invokes the body’s personal, political, and industrial guises in one fell swoop, deftly interweaving images and objects to create a forceful and maximal space that beckons toward engulfment and revelation alike. The present print relates to work created by Jafa for BLACK POWER TOOL AND DIE TRYNIG, the artist’s solo exhibition at 52 Walker, AFRO SAXON (2024) pairs an image of jazz musician Miles Davis with an image of a member of Abbath, a Norwegian black metal band. Favoring intuitive arrangement over uniformity, the artist eschews traditionally monolithic modes of presentation and instead coheres multiple simultaneous events, applying a decidedly Black and non-Western viewpoint that confronts twentieth-century art historiography and museology’s indebtedness to African aesthetics. A throughline that Jafa has often repeated throughout his career is his intention “to make Black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of Black music.
