OGR Torino hosts the first Italian solo exhibition of Arthur Jafa, Golden Lion 2019

From November 4, 2022, to January 15, 2023, OGR Torino presents RHAMESJAFACOSEYJAFADRAYTON, the first solo exhibition dedicated to American artist and filmmaker Arthur Jafa (Tupelo, Mississippi, 1960) by an Italian institution.

Arthur Jafa’s work includes films, artifacts, and happenings that defy categorization in an exploration of Black culture in the United States of unprecedented intensity and complexity. Made over more than three decades, Arthur Jafa’s multidisciplinary works challenge certain dominant cultural assumptions about issues of identity and race through experimental and immersive cinematic experiences. At the 2019 Venice Biennale, with the work The White Album exhibited in May You Live in Interesting Times at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, he was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist. A recurring question guides his artistic practice: how can media, objects, static and moving images convey the power, beauty and alienation inherent in American Black music? An inquiry to which the title of the exhibition also refers, citing the names of three electric guitars: Arthur Rhames (1957 - 1989), Pete Cosey (1943 - 2012), Ronny Drayton (1953 - 2020).

Commissioned and produced by OGR Torino in collaboration with Serpentine, curated by Claude Adjil and Judith Waldmann with Hans Ulrich Obrist, the exhibition project is the brainchild of Amira Gad and part of the Serpentine-sponsored tour of Jafa’s exhibition A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions. The exhibition is designed by the artist for the Binario 1 spaces as one large installation and brings together some of the artist’s most recent works, never before exhibited in Italy.

Highlighting the connection with music and the contamination between different disciplines and media characteristic of Arthur Jafa’s practice, on the occasion of the opening, on Nov. 4 at 10:30 p.m., jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran, cellist and composer Okkyung Lee and bassist Melvin Gibbs will perform together, in the OGR Turin Dome, for an evening conceived by the artist.

Jafa’s films have been acclaimed at the Los Angeles, New York and Black Star Film Festivals, and his work is included in celebrated collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the High Museum in Atlanta, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Stedelijk, the Luma Foundation, the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. Jafa has recent and upcoming solo exhibitions to his credit at Pérez Art Museum Miami; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark; and LUMA Arles in France.

For info: www.ogrtorino.it

Hours: Thursday and Friday 6 to 10 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Free admission.

Musical program curated by Claude Adjil.

Image: Arthur Jafa. Photo by Robert Hamacher. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.

OGR Torino hosts the first Italian solo exhibition of Arthur Jafa, Golden Lion 2019

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.