Arthur Jafa launched his largest career survey yet, titled I am Tony, across two floors of the New Museum in New York City on September 24.
Named in honor of the late jazz drummer Tony Williams, who played alongside Miles Davis as a teenager in the 1960s, the exhibition uses Black popular music as a structural framework to interpret American life, history, and culture. The retrospective runs until January 3, 2027, filling two levels of the museum’s OMA-designed wing with a sprawling collection of video collages, paintings, prints, sculptures, and archival installations.
Arthur Jafa Traces Black American Life in New Museum Retrospective
Visitors stepping into the exhibition are immediately met with an archival graft: an 1899 photograph titled Pledge of Allegiance, which depicts a young boy holding an American flag alongside dozens of boys raising their right arms in a barren field. Jafa transformed the historical image into wallpaper at the entrance, setting a reflective tone about national identity. The survey captures both the exuberance and the trauma of the Black experience in America through humor, music, and confronting imagery.
Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson, Gary Carrion-Murayari, and Calvin Wang, the installation employs a chaotic, freestyle salon-style layout. Museum director Massimiliano Gioni described the project at a media preview as an introspective
rather than a conventional retrospective, designed to offer viewers a direct look into the artist’s creative universe. The exhibition features iconic works from Jafa’s career, including the gelatin silver print Monster (1988), the Epson fine art print HR (2018), the sculptural tire installation Big Wheel VI (2018), and the digital video project AGHDRA (2021).
Cinematic Roots Shape the Artist’s Visual Music
Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1960, Jafa studied architecture and film at Howard University before moving to Los Angeles to pursue filmmaking. He established himself as a cinematographer, shooting Julie Dash’s art-house touchstone Daughters of the Dust and later collaborating with filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and Spike Lee. Jafa served as the director of photography for the opening sequence of Spike Lee’s 1994 film Crooklyn, capturing un-narrated snippets of neighborhood life in Bed-Stuy that film critic bell hooks praised for celebrating the everyday pleasures of Black life rather than focusing solely on cinematic suffering.
Throughout the retrospective, Jafa’s editing style relies on a principle of syncopation derived from jazz drumming. His visual grammar builds upon an endless archive of collected images, utilizing what he and collaborator John Akomfrah defined as affective proximities
—juxtaposition designed to reveal and disrupt how mainstream media portrays race. His video installations weave together film clips from Taxi Driver, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, Star Wars, and Belly alongside viral internet clips, gospel performances, and iconic archival footage, such as President Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace
.
Curators Balance Exuberance With Historical Weight
Central to the exhibition is Jafa’s widely recognized 2016 short film Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death, which debuted during the early years of the Black Lives Matter movement. Set to Kanye West’s Ultra Light Beam
, the seven-minute video juxtaposes dance parties and sports clips with police shootings and internet memes. The survey also features akingdoncomethas
(2018), an hour-and-forty-five-minute video installation combining gospel choir performances and church sermons punctuated by brief footage of California wildfires.
Addressing the inclusion of sensitive footage depicting police brutality and historical violence, co-curator Gary Carrion-Murayari acknowledged the curatorial challenges involved in bringing such material into a public gallery space.
It’s challenging to figure out how to present that kind of material within the public space of an exhibition, but I also say that it’s not only images of Black death and trauma; there’s also images of Black creativity.
Gary Carrion-Murayari, New Museum curator
Other gallery rooms house eclectic physical objects, including a full-sized Pontiac Firebird on the fourth floor and a dimly lit maze clad in black acrylic. Inside the maze, visitors catch fleeting glimpses of historical reproductions, including Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Judith Slaying Holofernes,
alongside personal clippings and magazine cutouts collected by the artist over decades. The exhibition remains on view at the New Museum through January 3, 2027.