Transcript
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The host introduces the show, previews the episode, and presents Arthur Jafa as the featured guest. The segment ends with a sponsor break before the conversation begins.
Hey babies, it's me, your favorite auntie Margeaux Carlos, and this is your favorite auntie show, powered by Cash App.A new kind of advice show brought to you by someone you actually listen to.Every week, I bring you cultural commentary, hard-to-hear advice, and must-hear conversations with some of the biggest names in fashion, media, entertainment, and beyond.Today, I have the great honor of being joined by my one of my favorite artist, and arguably one of the most influential artist of the last decade, Arthur Jafa.Arthur Jafa is an artist, filmmaker, and cinematographer whose work over the past four decades has profoundly shaped the way we think about blackness, American culture, and the politics of the image.Born in Mississippi and based in Los Angeles, Jafa studied architecture and film at Howard University before becoming an acclaimed cinematographer, most notably for Julie Dash's landmark film Daughters of the Dust.
He went on to develop a groundbreaking practice of his own, spanning film, video, photography, sculpture, and installation.He's perhaps best known for works like Love is the message, the message is death, his visceral seven-minute meditation on black life, music, beauty, violence, and American history, and The White Album, which examines whiteness and racism.In 2019, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for The White Album.What I find so fascinating about Arthur is the way he thinks about images and the tension between them, or affective proximity, as he's called it.His work draws from cinema, music, history, popular culture, and the internet.And as bell hooks once described, it's an example of what the decolonized gaze can produce.I first discovered his work through love is the message and then saw his solo show at Gavin Brown in 2018.I was completely floored and I followed his work ever since.
I love the way his brain works, the way he speaks about race and culture and America and honestly, the fact that one of the most prolific artists of our time is also extremely online.So it's a real honor to be speaking with Arthur ahead of his major survey at the new museum this fall.I am Tony.But before we get into our combo, auntie's got to pay a bill.
Margeaux answers a listener question about budgeting as a writer and podcast host. She shares practical advice about planning for fluctuating income and promotes Cash App features.
Okay babies, come sit down.You know auntie loves you, but auntie is not about to let you make financially irresponsible decisions in peace.You sent me your money questions and I'm here to answer them with love, with honesty and a little side eye.This is Rich Auntie brought to you by Cash App.Now, what are we doing with this money?This question comes from @Yasmina Matson who asks, "As a writer and podcast host, how do you budget for a year?"For me, the biggest thing is I don't budget based on my best month.My income can fluctuate, so I figure out what I realistically need to live on for the year, divide that by 12, and make that my baseline.Then whenever I have a really good month, I don't immediately upgrade my lifestyle.I put some of that money away for taxes, some into savings, and let it cover me when things are slower.
Basically, budget for the year you actually have, not the fantasy year where every invoice gets paid on time.And honestly, that's why I love tools that help me feel more confident and in control of my money because Rich Auntie is not trying to make money, Rich Auntie wants her money working for her.And that's where Cash App comes in.If you weren't up to speed already, Cash App's fraud monitoring services make the app more than just a safe way to send and receive money.With the Cash App card, you unlock a ton of perks without all the hidden fees.Enjoy benefits like exclusive early access to nationwide concert pre-sales, Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter to name a few.Uh plus discounts on everyday purchases and popular brands you're probably already spending money on.Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money moves easier.
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The conversation opens with praise for Jafa's work and his upcoming survey show. They discuss his anxiety about the exhibition, his long relationship with New York, and his son’s college life and comedy interests.
I know that you said before that your art is hit or miss, but your rap is elite.
So
It's clear.
I'm really excited and honored to be in conversation with you.
Yeah, yeah.
Um you know, you're one of the most important living artists today.2016's Love is the Message, The Message is Death is absolutely a seminal text.You've worked with giants like Jay-Z, Kanye West.Your film White Album won the Golden Lion at the Venice Bi- uh Biennale in 2019, and now you're on the eve of your retrospective I Am Tony at the New Museum.That's I you know all this,
but
It's more a survey, I think, than a retrospective.
Mm, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.All right.All right, cuz you were saying your brother said this was like a layup for you, but you
It should be.He said he said I don't know how to take layups, so
Uh that's what I do, you know?You know, certainly in this case, unnecessary anxiousness.You know, it's funny, it's like I don't I don't have a whole lot of anxiousness around art shows, like in general.So, I've been I've been definitely trying to figure out why I've been feeling a little little anxious, you know.
Nothing has come up for you yet?
Um I mean, it'd be 10 years since Love Is the Message was shown in Harlem, which is effectively the beginning of my art career.
Yeah.
Traction, at least.Um So, I guess it's you know, not living in New York for 17 years.So
Right.
definitely, you know, consider myself a New Yorker.It's only recently that I realized, "Oh, I've been in LA longer than I lived in New York," which is strange.And it's a strange feeling, I guess.Uh you know.
Yeah.
But still ask me from Hey, would you ever move back to New York?And I was like, "Nah, New York is like a ghost ghost town to me, like haunted house to me."
Mhm.
You know, and I don't even mean it in a negative way.I just mean even when people say, "Do you miss New York?"And I'm just like, "Yeah, the New York I miss doesn't even exist anymore."
I hear you say that again.
So, it's almost like every corner I'm on has a memory attached to it.You know, I'll be standing somewhere and say, "I remember when I was standing here with X, Y, and Z."A lot of times, a building that used to be there is no longer there.It's crazy.My favorite restaurants don't exist anymore.Um favorite bookstores.I like New York.I'm here a lot.I'm here a lot because you know, my primary gallery is here and uh I tend to try to stop here on my way to Europe cuz the flight from direct from LA to Europe is just brutal.Like, I used to be able to just shake it off, you know, but now it's like it takes me 3 days to kind of come up to speed, to recover a little bit.But I found it if I just even spend one night here, if I just sleep here for a night, it's like my body is able to adjust a little bit.
So, it's kind of worth it, you know.So, I'll tend to stop.And my son is at school here now.
Right, you were saying that.
Yeah, he started at Cooper Union last year.So
He just started his second year.So, you know, I get to check in on so, yeah.
How's his comedy
Hm?
You you His comedy
eventually
Well, I don't know.He never showed it to me.I've just heard you know, her her telling of it and friends of his.Apparently, he has videos of him doing his stand-up thing, but uh he just said he just bombs.He's never done anything but bomb.He's never
That's That's how you start.
Yeah.
That's how you start.
Yeah, he's less First of all, he's not funny.
You said this, but I was like, damn.
He's not funny, though, but uh he's more interested in like you know, Andy Kaufman and like he loves Eric Andre and stuff like that.
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kind of more conceptual, I guess.Something like that.But uh Yeah.
Is it generational gap, maybe?
generational.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's part of also just, you know, the COVID generation, so
it definitely had a big impact on him and a lot of his, you know, a lot of his friends, too.Like his best friend, like one of his best friends just sailed over like it was absolutely nothing, you know.
And uh ended up at um Saint Martin's in London.
Okay.
And Isla, on the other hand, you know, he didn't.He He really really struggled.It really discombobulated him, so it took him an extra year, a year and a half to sort of get his footing again.But, you know, and it's pretty common, too.
Jafa reflects on growing up between Tupelo and Clarksdale, the stark differences between them, and his parents’ work as educators. He describes a childhood shaped by books, travel, deprivation, and a strong awareness of what was missing around him.
Can we talk about your roots and how you grew up?
My roots?
Uh yeah, I mean
Yeah, you grew up in Tupelo.
Uh born in Tupelo.
Born in Tupelo, raised in Clarksdale.
Yeah, kind of you know, we lived in Clarksdale.We moved to Clarksdale when I was uh six or seven.
Mhm.
And uh you know, I've talked about this before, but just moved back and forth.So, that's why I say I was kind of grew up in both places, lived primarily in Clarksdale, but we would like back in Tupelo.At some point, at at certain points, we would like every weekend, you know?It's about a 2-hour drive.Um all of our extended family was in Tupelo.Kind of shaped me almost as much as anything just because the environments were like two they were so different.Like Tupelo was like the model new South post-integrated South.Um and Clarksdale wasn't.Clarksdale was for all purposes still segregated even though, you know, it wasn't a law at that point, but um
Wow.
You know, so it was strange.It's very it was very discombobulating in a way to go to Tupelo and see my cousins playing on Little League baseball teams and everything was integrated and whatever, you know?And then to come back to Clarksdale and everything was you had a a black Little Little League baseball and a white Little League baseball.Like even not at my high school, but at the Clarksdale High, which is one of the high schools, the largest high school I guess in Clarksdale proper, they had a black prom and a white prom.It was like that, you know?Wasn't that unusual.And you get to Tupelo and there's all this sort of interracial dating and stuff going on.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.I remember that like someone infamously or famously 60 Minutes did a story like in maybe 1980 if I remember with Ed Bradley or I don't know, forget it.It was a two-part story about the South and they came to Tupelo.
Uh-huh.
And they interviewed a lot of people that I knew.And in particular, I remember like a friend of ours, Joe Washington, he was like the class president at Tupelo High, which is the main high school in Tupelo.So, he was a class president and I remember him being on there.And Joe Ed Bradley asked him something about interracial dating or something.He was like, "No, no, you don't do that here."And it was funny cuz everybody knew his girlfriend was this girl named Brittany.It was funny.It's kind of strange.
But your parents were educators.
Yeah.College professors at a small black college called Coahoma College.So
That's so That's
So I grew up on a campus, college campus.And it's interesting like in in the deep south You know, I say the deep south now that makes it sound all whatever but it was just where you know, where I lived.
Right.
In Clarksville and but on the campus.
Yeah.
So it was interesting both inside and outside in a way.By the time I was in high school, I think like well half of my classmates were like just like first generation off of plantations and stuff like that.So
Yeah, it was you know, and my dad in particular when I was younger also was a basketball coach at the school.So uh When he He was a football coach at one point like for the high school and then at some But anyway, so I was used to accompanying him on these recruiting trips.Like he would go and recruit people to play sports.And so we I spent a lot of time in the car with him driving up in some backwoods to get so-and-so's parents to sign permission for their kids to you know, play sports or something.So Um it's interesting.So saw a lot of interesting stuff.Met a lot of interesting people.
How did growing up with two educators impact the way that you learned and like the way that you
My my great aunt, my grandmother's sister was like the first black woman to get a master's degree in Mississippi or something like that.
I was afraid to talk around her growing up cuz she'd always correct you.
Right.Right.Right.
So to this day if I think of my Aunt Hattie, who was an amazing woman I think of being You know what I mean?Cuz every other word out she was like
Yeah.
grammatically incorrect but uh I don't know.Like my parents I don't know if it was so much cuz they were educators so much I think.You know, they are part of the civil rights generation and teaching was a mission.It wasn't a vocation.
Right.
I can remember them buying like World Book Encyclopedias.This is before internet and stuff.
Right.Right.Right.
Guy coming in and selling encyclopedias and they bought World Book and I think I read the whole all of them.
That just sounds so right though.
I remember it was a big it was just like a a lot of information, you know, voracious.I would say yeah, for sure and then they bought the Britannica after that.So you know, it was a good investment you know, for me.It's funny I think sometimes God, what would I have been like if you know, had been the internet and stuff like that, you know.It's totally different.The whole idea just been able to access information even though obviously as a good friend of mine Brother Gibbs said the internet is full of data but very little information.
He explains how scarcity and curiosity pushed him to leave Mississippi and attend Howard University. The discussion covers his first year in Washington, D.C., housing chaos, and the surreal experience of arriving at Howard.
Um I think but it's interesting just to think about it cuz so much of my childhood and youth I think was very much framed by a sense of deprivation like not having access to things.
Mhm.
Um you know, a real sense of it a palpable sense of it.Like say for example, just going to Tupelo there were just things that were in Tupelo that you just you know I remember reading in Rolling Stone like I had a subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.
Okay.
Um I think in the eighth grade or something like that and uh and you're reading about things like punk rock.What's this punk rock thing and you know, couldn't buy the record in Clarksdale.Could buy it in Tupelo, you know.Just stuff like that.
Yeah.
Um or you know, in the summer like my parents who traveled a lot like in the summer but like
Mhm.
not like now like flying around now.Everything was a road trip.So
Right.
I almost feel like sometimes I grew up in a car, you know, just cuz we were on the road so much.Um but you know, it really impacted my sense of what was out there, but it also made it like made me acutely aware of um absences like in in where I grew up, you know.Like even just like looking at television.I remember being like sometimes we'd spend weeks at a time in Chicago or in New York in the summer with cousins, you know.And man, a big deal for me and certainly my brother who's right under me was like the scheduling around television.Like things you could see like Gargantua and Speed Racer and things like that were Thunderbirds, things like that you could see on see on television in Chicago, but you couldn't see in the South, you know, or in Mississippi.
I mean the television that we looked at was cuz we were very near Memphis, so we always looked at television coming out of Memphis.But even even that there were just, you know, there were there were just a lot of things you you just couldn't see or books like I was a avid science fiction reader pretty early, but you know, that amountedto, you know, getting things in the mail.Wasn't really like about going to a bookstore and buy buy science fiction, so.
I feel that.
Yeah, so.
I grew up in Dallas and I feel like the same way.There was like there were these kind of dispatches
Mhm.
from the outs the outside world, quote unquote, and I would go and I like you I was obsessed with magazines and that was like my portal.And like cuz you you couldn't access certain things where I was,
Yeah.
you know?And I'd be like, why is that?Why
Yeah.
And it felt like you know, I got to get to that.
I mean, even today I associate grocery stores with magazines more than I do with food.
If I went to the grocery store with my mom, I really would just go to the news rack, and just be reading magazines and stuff, you know?So.
I felt that.Did that deprivation, quote unquote that deprivation, that lead you to be like, I got to I got to leave Mississippi?
I was trying to get the out.There was no doubt about that.Um,
I think I spent the first 18 years of my life trying to get out of there, you know?And uh I went straight from, you know, from from Clarksdale to Howard University in D.C.
Was that a culture shock?
Yeah.Yeah, you know, in some ways.I mean, like I said, we traveled a lot, so I'd been to D.C.and stuff.
Yeah.
I had cousins in D.C., but not by myself, you know?I don't know if it was a culture shock more than any anytime anybody leaves their house and goes off to college, but but yeah, for sure.Yeah, for sure.I had I mean, my freshman year at Howard and really my freshman year in D.C.
Okay.
Because I was in an off-campus dorm as well, because when I got there, they didn't have enough housing for the incoming freshman class.And so, they were scrambling to get housing there.So, they bought a building.Like, while I was there, my parents drove me up.I remember my dad going to the administration building, registration building, and said, "I didn't bring him all the way up here to put him in a, you know, a barracks or something like that."He says, "So, if you guys don't find him a room, you know, dorm room, like I'm taking him back home."That was just my dad.
Jafa talks about campus life, black college culture, and the performative energy of Southern sports and Greek life. He reflects on black expressiveness, extra effort, and the cultural logic behind performance.
And so, I ended up in this uh dorm, called Sutton Plaza, which is really a hotel that they had converted.I mean, there was a pimp who lived in the penthouse of the dorm.I apparently had a lease they couldn't break, and when they bought the building, so they bought him out at some point.
What year was this?
This is like '79 going into '80.
Damn.
Um and so, he would come down, you know, it had the whole thing like the lobby with the elevators.It was mirrored the whole thing.Super 70s.
He would come down full on superfly.
Really?The hat, the cane, the
Whole thing.Like right out of a movie.And you know, and he was talking to these freshman girls.So it was
No good.
We didn't see him after that first semester.But apparently they bought him out.But
Okay.Okay.
But yeah, it was uh So it was just it was really kind of surreal like the first, you know.So I spent a lot of time like, you know, they had uh shuttle buses to take us from Sutton Plaza
Okay.
to the campus.But you know, invariably you're going to walk sometimes as well.And uh it was just We were embedded, let's say, in the community.It was, you know, how it like is often the case with black universities.It was all universities period.They're in communities, you know.So It was it was interesting like just navigating it.Um I was surprised at how many of my fellow students were at Howard precisely because they'd never been in all black environments.So for a lot of people that was a big thing.
Yeah.
For me it wasn't because I had just, you know, you know, I grew up on a campus.
Yeah.
The South, SWAC.You know, football and like Alcorn Jackson State.It was always black colleges.And my parents were both in fraternities.Mom AKA, dad Omega Sci-Fi.And then we're graduate advisors.So I grew up going to group, you know, Greek shows and things like that.So a lot of the stuff that, you know, really colored like people's experiences who had So many people had just grown up in totally white environments.
Mhm.
Mhm.
You know, um I didn't find I was like, cool, but like not, you know.I mean, when I saw School Daze I was like, mhm.I've seen better Greek shows.
Better than this, but you know.yeah.So,
That's like I think that is a was one of the first opportunities for people to see that type of Yeah, yeah, yeah.To see that type
no shade on No shade on School Daze or anything, but I just mean, you know, the South was like I mean, if the if Clark said it was the capital of the Delta, the South was just, you know,this is like coming out of segregation time.So,
it wasn't like in somehow marginal like for black folks, it was it.You know what I mean?Like so, in terms of football, you know, you're talking about you know, Grambling, Jackson State, Alcorn, Mississippi State.It was like all pretty much localized right there in the South with football.So, even you know, professional football players and stuff, they were predominantly coming from what they call SWAC, Southwestern Athletic Conference football.Walter Payton, people like these people are coming from Jackson State and places like that.So, or Jerry Rice, you know, I remember seeing Jerry Rice when I was in high school at
Really?
Yeah, Mississippi Valley.He played uh Wow, it was You talk about a spectacle.Like between the bands,
Right.
the band battles,
Yeah.
the passing and Godly the things I saw is just kind of amazing.Like
They They used to call it I think they call it air raid or something like that.And the coach of Mississippi Valley State, which historically never could beat Jackson State,
Okay.
but when Willie Totten and Jerry Rice were there, they were just unstoppable like offensively.And then I'll never forget at the end of the game when when Mississippi State beat Jackson State for the first time in like 15 years or something like that, the whole team lined up on the sideline.Like the whole his whole team had lined up on the sideline, and then they all ran across the field towards the other sideline.And right before they got to the other side, they all slid down on their knees and did like this with their fingers.I mean, you can't make this up.It was crazy.
We are we we we we are performers.We are entertainers, you know?Like that's what we do.
Yeah.
That's I I think that's a part of the big game.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I love that.
Like I always say, you know, it ain't figure skating for us.Like I know like I always say like you know, basketball player, you come down, take the layup, you get your two points.But why do black people persist in coming down and doing a 360 and dunking the ball?You don't get any more points.It's not like figure skating, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Where, you know, you get a 7.5 or 8.5.So, you raise the level of difficulty, but you don't get any more points.Why do we persist in doing that?
Cuz we're just throwing our
We're extra.
Yeah, we're extra and like I don't like you know, you talked about this before.It's like you know, lacking material resources, we do what we can with what we've got, you know?And I think that has a lot to do with it.
Yeah.
You know?
I mean, it's a profoundly kind of anti-capitalist
Yeah.
impulse like in a way, you know?
Yeah.
Um Yeah.
Absolutely.
Less is more, but that's how I like to say
Like your show.
Yeah.
So.
He recounts the griot origin story and how it helped him understand his own role as an observer and storyteller. The conversation turns to his tendency to become emotionally flat in conflict and how that affects his relationships.
You had a uh teacher that called you a griot.
He didn't call me a griot.He asked He in his film, there was this whole thing about griots, and he asked me what a griot Did I know what a griot was?
Oh, okay, okay, okay, got you.
And then he just shared the story with me, which had a really profound impact on me, and he told the story about you know, it's like the mythic origin of the griots.There were two brothers who were when they were young, they traveled, they left their village, and they went on this long epic like, you know, odyssey like quests and went over different parts of, you know, the world andthen years later they were making their way back home and they were very close to their village and they got close and one of the brothers realized that he was in such a weakened state that he was notgoing to be able to make it back home.So, rather than endanger his brother, he just told his brother, "Hey, um you know, I just need to take a little rest here.I'm going to take a little rest on the side of the road.
You keep going.Uh I'm going to just going to rest a bit then I'll catch up with you later."So, the brother said, "Okay."He walked on off and after a certain while when he didn't his brother didn't catch up, he turned around and came back and then saw his brother laying on the side of the road dying.He realized when he saw him that his brother was dying.So, uh he took a knife and he cut his own calf off and cooked the calf and woke his brother up and said, "Hey, look, I found food.You should eat."So, his brother ate the calf, regained his strength.They got up, made it back to the village.Everybody was excited to see them.They hadn't seen them in, you know, 20 years or whatever.People cheered and then somebody saw one of the brothers bleeding on his leg.
As in myth, they knew immediately what had happened that he had, as the guy told me, consumed the flesh of his brother.So, that made him a ghoul, right?So, everybody screamed and ran away and the brother who had eaten his brother's flesh looked down at the leg and he understood what had happened and he said, "From this point onwards, me and my sons and daughters willsing the praises of you and your sons and daughters."And on and on and on, like, so he was saying.So, that's like where the first griots came from.
And he said, "And the thing about it is griots occupied this very I mean, they had a lot of power because they kept the history, you know, of the communities.But when they died, they didn't bury them with everybody else.They put them in these trees and let the maggots eat them."And then he said, "That just speaks to the complex relationship between griots and the community.Like they serve this function, but at the same time they quote feed on the flesh of the people.And so this guy was offering it to me because I think I had said something like I felt very alienated and so many of my friends, a lot of my friends, I'm thinking one person in particular just shesaid, I just feel like I'm a bug when I'm around you like you're just studying me like a scientist or something.
And uh and I have become very conscious of that, you know.Wasn't I wasn't doing it like intentionally.It was just I was curious about people and things and and the guy said, I'm sharing the story with you because what you're describing your sense of alienation is just the griot thing.
Mhm.
And there's no way you're going to be able to do if that's your calling to study people and to tell stories and things like that, you just it just comes with the territory because people know when you're aroundthem and you're looking at them in certain kind of way.And you know, and over the years I've had different experiences, you know, like I remember once uh and I was telling somebody else this and my brother it's funny.It was a Zoom and I was telling somebody else this and my brother was sitting on the other side of the table doing whatever he was doing cuz you know, you're on Zooms, you don't know what's going onaround.And he was typing and I started telling the story about yeah, I remember this time my brother caught on fire.Like we were messing around in some junkyard or something.
I can't remember what it was.Somewhere doing some we weren't supposed to be doing and he caught on fire.And I distinctly remember grabbing my brother and fanning him some water to put him out, but also looking at it like, yo I've never seen him on fire.This is incredible.And my brother burst out laughing.He said, I remember being on fire and thinking, my brother's not trying to put
me out.He's actually like taking notes or recording this, you know.So, I've always sort of had a little of that, you know.Um It's funny like even for me like even I don't know I don't know if this is a consequence of just growing up in very chaotic circumstance like Mississippi was very chaotic, you know.
I mean it was a very charged environment like 10 years prior to me being there like Emmett Till within a 50-mi radius of where Emmett Till was still uh Till was killed.So, you know, even though I didn't experience anything directly like that, that kind of stuff it permeates the landscape in a certain kind of way.And so, it was a very charged and chaotic and um haunted spook spook you know, spooky environment to grow up in.
Yeah.
So, you know, I saw a lot of crazy I mean like like in a way it was just a rural equivalent of people would say ghetto You know, but this is like the uber ghetto in a way becauseMississippi is like, you know, ground zero in terms of in a certain way a certain sort of black abjection even, you know.
Mhm.
And one of the ways that I processed it personally was just to get very flat.Like if I seen my uncles fighting or some like that uh people like guns and I just even from a kid would just get like super flat.It was like I would go into like zoned out kind of Terminator mode and you'd just be like just checking it out, you know.So,
Observing.
Yeah, I think so.I've always had kind of had a version of that.It drives women crazy.
Why?
Because the more like you know, when people get irritated the flatter I get.And so, if you're trying to There's a dynamic.I've noticed over the years that I have to kind of check that a little bit becauseyou know, when people are trying to express certain things to you and they get loud or whatever, but your thing just goes dampens down like It could kind of have I used to think I'm trying to keep mycalm, so you should be calm.But typically that's not how it works.Typically it makes people feel like you're not registering what they're saying or what they're trying to articulate.So it could It seems illogical, but it's a little Sometimes it has a counter effect, you know, like if people want you to engage you know.
You don't take the bait.Not No.
No, as a matter of fact, I run.
It's spider flight or like how
But it's not even like running.It's just like I I go inward.
Okay.
I get very I don't know if that's gendered it's gendered to a certain degree, but I think you know, I have I definitely probably have a you know, I'm on the out outer pole of extreme version of it.I don't argue with people.I don't get into fights.I'm pretty calm, you know.
You seem very calm like generally.Until I'm not.
Um but you know, Mr.Spock Vulcan super Vulcan.So if people get loud, I get very very very quiet, you know, and I've always kind of been like that.Cuz I said my uncles were wild.My grand dad was wild.You know, I can just as remember as a kid would get wild and I would just look like this I don't have no other point of references but this seems kind of out, you know, and a wild likelike I've seen I've seen them do things.
You're kind of like that meme of like Homer Simpson, you know, how he goes into the bushes?It's just kind of like
You know, you're just
I said a little bit a little bit a little bit like uh
How do you
the predator, you know, how they go into that mode where they blend with the background.
Yes.
Definitely.
Well, how did that impact
it's a boy, you know, kind of boy you are too, so.
Jafa connects architecture, dance, and film as forms of seeing and spatial experience. He describes his early visual instincts, his work on Daughters of the Dust, and the difficult transition into professional cinematography.
How did that impact the way that you be and you and your art because I know you initially went to Howard to study architecture but then went into film which is all about looking, which is all about observing,which is and seeing.
I mean, architecture is about observing too and experiencing, you know, it's about experiencing spaces.Like a lot of people they judge architecture by what it looks like, you know, like I was in Barcelona and it says all about Gaudi's buildings and what they look like, you know, and that's a big part ofit, but you know, the experiential part of, you know, you experience architecture.It's like dancing, like, you know, you think of dancing and people think of dancing most people don't think of dancing as a visual form.
Mhm.
It's not the first thing people would think
Mhm.
of it as a visual art form, but basically you see people dance.
Yeah.
You know, so the architecture thing it wasn't like in hindsight in particular or what I do now the sort of in expanded sense art thing it's the same set of preoccupations.I mean, the earliest creative thing I can remember doing you know, as a child was like like would be what they call the time Lincoln Logs which are like a version of like Lego blocks, you know.
yeah.
Just putting things together and so I've always had a kind of uh play Tetris a little bit.I've always had this thing like from about 4 or 5 years old my dad realized that I got very disturbed if the trunk of the car wasn't so it's like what we would now call like neurodivergent and so
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
so my dad would let me pack the trunk
Yeah.
of the cars cuz I'd if it was all in there
Get get the space and the Yeah, yeah, yeah.Like Tetris.
So I have a very uh pronounced I mean, what are you going to do with it on a certain level?Be the world's greatest trunk packer.
What would that that modality you don't know what to
Yeah, like the modality.It's kind of like if you were had the natural attributes to be you know, an Olympic-class swimmer, but you grew up you know, in landlocked somewhere, you know.
So you had the physical attributes, but maybe your parents moved.And so you got this ability that can't even really express itself or it expressed itself in uh peculiar ways, you know, seemingly peculiar ways or or ways that you don't understand yourself until you find yourself in a differentcontext and all of a sudden something that seemed at least minimally eccentric and maybe even somehow problematic sort of makes sense, you know.So I just I mean, I I think a lot of this stuff is kind of typical.I mean, I don't think it's rare.Uh particularly for black folks, I think because you know, this is not a society built to facilitate our natural capacities
Mhm.
outside of things like athletics
Mhm.
or entertaining to a certain degree just because those things have they've been commodified to a certain degree.So this there's such a a universe of things that we uh do which may or may not may or may not have found an appropriate in this sort of commodified sense avenue to express themselves.But nevertheless, like I was talking about in the beginning, why do we persist?
In the extra, you know?
Right, right.
Like why do we persist?It's like
Did you find that you could really put those to practice in your cinematography and your film work or did you
My work as a cinematographer was, I think, largely under-realized.
Mhm.
Uh I think I was capable of a lot more than I was than that I achieved.
Mhm.
Um I love the form, but I didn't like the business.
Yeah.
You know?And so
In what way?
it came acutely aware of.Uh I didn't like the politics.
Right.
I didn't like the politicking around it.I just wanted to focus on the image like in a way.I didn't like the hierarchies, the mind games, the sort of pyramid scheme of it.You know, being on sets, you got the director or the producers.I mean It's a pyramid scheme and then from the top people are abusing or having an abusive or um a domineering sort of way of dealing with things.It tends to filter down.I mean, I'm both a person who is inclined towards being a team player,
Mhm.
but I'm also a person who has very little tolerance for you know, oppressive hierarchical situations and so you know, I would bump heads a lot.You know, I started off with a bang because the first thing I shot was Daughters of the Dust.
1991?
Yeah.So, but you know, we started shooting and it took years to finish it.
How long did it take you?
Well, three maybe three like this is not accounting trying to raise money and developing the script and all that.I just mean from the point we shot the first time.It's about 3 and 1/2 years.And so, you know, I was in my I was like maybe 27.
Mhm.
By time it's in the theaters, I'm like 30, 31, you know, so you know, I'm I'm proud of it, but I also know that if we had taken a one week break when we finished it and shot itagain, it would have been a lot better cuz I learned so much doing it.
I mean, it's really a formidable seminal text.I mean, and I I I believe that it it truly is breathtaking.But you you're saying that like you would have reshot it in a way that
I mean, I just learned a lot like in the process of doing it.We only shot for like like 3 weeks maybe a little shorter 3 weeks like 15 days or something like that.So, you know, I prior to that, I shot some short films, but you know, 3 days of shooting maybe 4 days of shooting.So, after the first week, it was like dead reckoning.I was outside of any prior experience of having done anything.I was co-producing the film with the Julie Dash and initially I was just going to produce it.I wasn't going to shoot it.And the guy we had initially interested in shooting it got a big commercial job and I shot it.So, I ended up shooting it.But um and didn't think much of it.Wasn't trying to be a cinematographer or anything and I remember we were so broke.
Julie went with Daughters when we finished it to Sundance.And I can still remember the phone call.I was like, "How's it going?"And she called me from Salt Lake, you know, Utah and said, "You'll never guess what happened."I was like, "What happened?"She said she won the cinematography award at Sundance.And I was like, "What?"You know, I didn't
Right.
Um I wasn't trying to be a cinematographer.I wanted to direct, but you know, I always thought I would shoot my own things and um but you know, but I didn't realize at the time that that experience of working on Daughters was uh an unorthodox experiencein that even though I had an opportunity to work with more resources and things like that, it came with so many other kinds of constraints.
Right.
You know, so like things that I did I wasn't necessarily so proud of.Like it took me years to be proud of Crooklyn, say for example.
Really?Why do you say that?
Well, cuz it was a hard experience and it was uh you know, I mean it was a harsh learning curve.
Cuz that was a Was that the film you did right after Daughters of the Dust?
Well, it wasn't right after because it was as I said, I wasn't really trying to do it as a living.Um I uh moved to New York after Daughters and started shooting documentaries, I guess, just sort of.And uh uh Spike and Ernest came to see Daughters.We had a screening where we were trying to get the distribution deal for it.And I invited I knew Spike.I knew I met Spike in UCLA like years before, like before he did She's Gotta Have It and stuff.And um they uh came to the screening.I thought maybe he could help or something.
Yeah.
And they were like running out of there at the end of the screening.In the same way most of the distributors were running out there.It was like, "This is too slow.There's no audience for this thing."So as a producer, I'm trying to grab these distributors and then Spike came and said, "Great work."Like meaning, you know, your my work as a cinematographer."Great work.You want to work on Malcolm X?"And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever."You know, like this.And uh maybe a week later, I got a call from 40 Acres for the office says, "Calling from Spike Lee's office."Uh I was like, "Oh, yeah, right, right, right, right."And they said, "Yeah, so Spike, you know, wants to talk."And I was like, "Okay."And I got on the phone.He was like, "Well, we want you to come in and want you to be second unit director of photography."
And I was like, "What?"I thought he wanted me to be like an assistant, like a gofer or something, like his assistant or something.So that was crazy and a learning experience and intense and then after Malcolm X, you know, maybe I think they did one other film after Malcolm X and then Spike asked me to shoot Crooklyn.
Wow.
And you know, it was professional and I wasn't really a professional.
Like not really, like in hindsight,
you know, I wasn't really a professional.
In your early 30s, maybe?
I was like 31.No, hold up.30 30 33, sorry.I was thinking about Malcolm X, but like on Crooklyn I was 33.So Um
He reflects on Crooklyn, Malcolm X, and the constraints of the film business, including union rules and hierarchy. Jafa also praises Malik Sayeed and Spike Lee’s role in shaping black filmmaking.
Well.
You know, it was really different.Like I like like honestly, it was an incredible opportunity.
Yeah.
I learned a lot.I made a little bit of money.Uh but it was like going from uhYou know, I don't want to say it in a way that seems I don't want to frame it pejoratively, but it was like going from a jazz band to something else.
Mhm.Were you doing right, you're doing improving every night?
had a lot of leeway on the orders and Julie trusted me and then all of a sudden there was a union and union rules and they didn't want me to operate, you know, cuz you're a DP and they'resupposed to be an operator.I was like, "Not letting me operate is like the camera is like really tying my hands.It's like something like in Europe cinematographers would operate and DP.So it was you know, it was a it was weird.It was a weird interesting you know, experience.
Yeah.
And it it must have changed the way that you thought about your career in film and like
want to shoot anymore afterwards.
Cuz you have such an eye.Like Daughters of the Dust, it's like I mean, the light like that you use in the capture
light with my friends.
What?
No, it's funny like like my friend like I have like I feel like I have an infallible sense of like talented cinematographers.I can pick somebody out from a mile away.I swear to God.Like you know, my friend good friend close friend Malik Sayeed
Mhm.
who went on to shoot Clockers and a bunch of other films for Spike and most famously I think the last film he shot at a certain point was Belly by Hype Williams which is you know, like God levelyou know.
Yeah and and just shot his first feature film in 25 years.After After he shot Belly he didn't shoot another feature film for 25 years.He just shot Luca Guadagnino's film After the Fall with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali.That was the first film he shot in over 25 years and he just shot.He went straight from now and shot another film with Luca that's coming out now about Sam Altman the artist.
Oh yes.Yes.Yes.Yes.With Andrew Garfield.Yeah.
it's like it's like Sonny Rollins or something how they say Sonny Rollins dropped out and he was playing on the bridge for 25 This is like Malik is incredible.
Wow.
And it's like and you look at you know, not a lot of people liked After the Fall but man looked incredible.
I was about to say it was gorgeous.
It looked incredible.
I think it was a complicated script but I think yeah.
And the new one looks like I've just seen the trailer and it's like it's going to look amazing.It looks like it's going to be interesting.
It's going to be very interesting.
Yeah.Um but you know, but Malik again I met Malik on the set of Malcolm X.We just hit it off from day one.I'm about 10 years older than Malik but we just hit it off and it was like you know, so when I went to do Crooklyn I was like he's my gaffer and Spike and them were like Uh-uh.Too much inexperience.We cannot turn this whole thing over to you and a 22-year-old guy, you know what I mean?But Malik was like, you know, I was talking earlier about Tony Williams, he was like Tony Williams.He was uh a prodigy.Like literally.Cuz within 2 years the work him and Hype were doing on music videos, this is like the golden age of these videos.Hype was directing like seemingly like 75% of every hip-hop video that was on MTV, and Malik was shooting the majority of those videos.
So they There was a point where their dominance, sorry, of the whole music video thing was so absolute.I mean, outside of Spike, the work that Hype and Malik did is was probably the most important.It changed the nature of black filmmaking cuz they trained Spike's whole 40 Acres thing, more people trained coming through that 40 Acres.Mhm.Like it's one thing like, whatever you think, you know, of Spike as a person or his work or something, he he damn near like the MLK of film.Like you cannot talk about black cinema in the 20th century.It's like before and after Spike.Like it's that It's beyond you know, like I say, it's like it's beyond good or bad or good or evil maybe even.It's beyond any of that.It's just It's so massive like his contribution.You know, and like just a little bit below that, like in terms of black people learning professionalism and stuff, was Hype and Malik, you know.
So you know, so Malik and then like, you know, even like, you know, Bradford, like my track record is is crazy in terms of saying that's that's next.That person is next.I remember when Spike then was saying to me, "Oh, no, you can't use Malik."I was like, "Look, this dude is he's the future.He's the future this."Cuz I wasn't really trying to be no cinematographer.I was trying to direct, but you know, didn't have the wherewithal.Like, there were so many things that come with directing.
Mhm.
Like, you know, you have to be able to raise money.You have to have a producer as an independent.You know, look, honestly, just say it bluntly, if I had been white, it would have been like totally different.
You don't go to Sundance and win the cinematography award at 27 or whatever
Yeah.
and not have opportunities.
Right.
I mean, I got a few opportunities.I don't sometimes I don't even want to say some of this stuff out loud cuz it seems so outlandish.But I remember like getting the script for White Men Can't Jump
Okay.
and being like, I was put here to do that.Like, you know, I mean, some of this is so crazy.I swear to God.Like, like one of my favorite films, I think it's the single greatest film made in the in the 21st century.
What's that?
Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love.
Oh, yes.
And uh I was introduced to him at the New York Film Festival.I had been told he was coming and we were supposed to meet.
Okay.
This is after Daughters and prior to Crooklyn.
Okay.
Uh
'90s?
He and he had seen Daughters of the Dust.Had been sent to him by a mutual friend.
Mhm.
Well, a friend of a mutual friend, a good friend of mine is Ada Gay Griffin, who was one of the directors of Third World Newsreel at the time, was really good friends with a guy named Norman Wong, whowas a John Woo and Wong Kar-wai's US representative or something like that.So, they were trying to connect us and so I met him at the New York Film Festival.He was showing Happy Together
Okay.
with the film he did in Argentina, which is incredible.Working with Chris Doyle, and they were looking for some, you know, somebody else to work with.So, he was basically wanting me to shoot what turned out to be In the Mood for love.
Wow.
And I
What?
couldn't get my head wrapped around moving to Hong Kong.I just couldn't.I was like I remember saying to my best friend Greg like I just feel for better for worse my trajectory is here.
Okay.
I'm not I often wonder who or what I would have been if I had I mean I think it was a combination of a kind of certain certainty that my thing was positive be here.
Mhm.
Not disconnected or whatever and fear honestly and fear that I wasn't up to it.But um
The discussion turns to the pressures black artists face in white-dominated industries and the lack of support structures around them. Jafa explains how structural invisibility shapes who gets seen, funded, and sustained.
I read your one of your exes said that you were like Michael Jordan with a limp.
And I don't know if that was like a fear thing.Like that what her saying that was kind of like a fear factor.
Oh no, she was that was a reference to like what I was saying earlier I didn't have the wherewithal certain you know healthy issues.It was just what's required of you as a black person to succeed in these spaces often times is nobody else is held to that standard.
Right.Right.
You know, they're incredible filmmakers in Hollywood who are heroin addicts all kinds of stuff.Huh?You know, Academy Award winning directors are heroin addicts and stuff or were heroin addicts through large swaths of their career.Keith Richards who I love Keith Richards, but you know, he was a heroin addict doing the richest parts of his career, you know?But there were people around him who not were not only invested in him doing his thing, you know, have the infrastructure for him to do his thing but they were interested in him beyond him as a cash cow.
Right.
Like Keith Richards survived or Jimi Hendrix didn't survive cuz he was there by himself.So um
Tim Basquiat?
The same thing.It's really the same thing.Whenever a black person black artists succeeds in a realm where there's no precedent for them being there,
Mhm.
um it's a syndrome and people are isolated.You know, it's not to say that the people around him don't love them or something like that, but it's just different.You know, like Mick Jagger and that crew who are or the Beatles, they grew up together.
Right.
And so yeah, it was my business and me and a successful rock band or whatever,
you know, they weren't like guys for hire, you know?And so they were invested in the survival of the person beyond the person as a commodity.And um you know, often times black folks find themselves in these situations like my dad would always say black people don't get paid to sit on the bench.It means often times when we're in situations where we get to do something, it's do or die.It's not like you're going to do something and you're going to come back another day.It's like everything is
Yeah, you
you know, on the line.And it's hard to develop like that.Like, you know, it's why you know, in like the Kentucky Derby, they don't race certain horses too young cuz they can break a horse to rate race against horses a year or 2 years older.They can ruin a horse that by all purposes will be like It's like for every LeBron James who could be 19 and come to the NBA and excel, there are guys who maybe were as talented as him butdidn't have the psychological maturity or wherewithal just to survive the context
Right.
based on where they came from or whatever, you know?Like, there's a lot of talented players.Like, LeBron and Kobe, those are like those are like exceptions, really.Kobe, you know, you kind of understand it.His dad was a professional basketball player.He grew up around professional basketball players.He grew up in Italy.He didn't grow up here.So, his whole psychological makeup was totally different.LeBron is a son of a single black mom, you know, teenage mom.So, there's no accounting for it, but those are rare exceptions.So, so often they're equivalents of this.So, I know there's no real investment in having a young black filmmaker be in Hollywood.They don't care.They're not interested in black people.Certainly at the times being in Hollywood, you know?Like Hollywood is a very, very interesting like context.Like first of all, Spike was never in Hollywood.
That's one of the things he got right.His base was always here in New York.You know, he aligned himself more with the tradition of filmmakers who weren't Hollywood filmmakers like Scorsese and people like that who had access to Hollywood, but they really were not in Hollywood, you know?And his base was here.So, as a black person, how do you enter into that?I can kind of say, "Yeah, it's up
Yeah.
that I had to be like Spike to win."Like meaning a multi-hyphenate, a guy who's a good writer, a great director, an amazing impresario, driven like a maniac.You got to be all these things just to get in the game.It's like if LeBron also had to be a marketer and you know, and all this other stuff as opposed to just playing.
Yeah.
And then if you take like I said the complexity of the context then it's uh it's a big it's a big it's a big leap, a big lift, you know?
Mhm.
And our world is it is what it is.
What does that mean?
I'm not going to get you on another
You're going to get me in trouble here.I mean like, you know, as a really good friend and incredible artist whose name won't mention, said it to me 30 years ago.Basically, if you're preoccupied in the art world with having a black dealer and something like this, you know, the times are the times.Like, things change slowly, but it's kind of like if Jackie Robinson was like not just focused on getting in the game and excelling,
Right.
but was like focused on having a black owner and a black whatever in 1940 something, it says.You know, things change.Time It's It's nothing wrong with it.It just structurally is what it is.And so, you know, I mean, I think about it a lot like in terms of my sort of success in the art world.I'm very
preoccupied in in some ways with why me?Why why have I been as successful as I've been?Like, um
Why do you think that is?
Well, I don't have a definitive answer about it, but I would say it made me incredibly ambivalent thus success.
Really?
Yeah, because like on a certain level, where one naturally goes to is like, who's invested in you succeeding given the kinds of things that, you know, you're doing, your work is about.Like, look, if I had signed the Illuminati I wouldn't be confused about it.But, you know, nobody As far as I can tell, nobody in the Illuminati is interested in me.They've never approached me about signing anything.I've never gone to Puffy's parties or anything like that.I'm just over here being whatever my level of success is, and I'm trying to account for it.Like, I'm not so ego-driven that I think I'm so good.You know, like, that You know how many black artists like in painters and stuff, geniuses they have been running around all doing in the '60s and '70s and and not a single person had a gallery.Prior to Basquiat, there wasn't a single black artist who uh was represented by a blue chip gallery.
And it's not because there weren't geniuses all around.
Right.
It was just because it wasn't available to us.It was essentially a segregated thing.When I first started working with Gavin, one of the first things I asked him was like, "How come you never had a black artist prior to me?"
What did he say?
Uh he gave a very honest answer.He said something like, "I just couldn't see them."Which I think speaks to a sort of structural in in invisibility like in a way.Um I asked Gavin this because he's a person I think who's incredibly principled.For better or for worse, and uh I knew he would answer me as honestly as he could, and he did.I asked Barbara the same thing, and she essentially said something very similar.And these are people I think I respected.I love Gavin very much.I love Barbara very dearly.And uh
Just Gavin Brown and Barbara Gladstone.
Huh?
Just for the audience who Gavin Brown and Barbara Gladstone.
Yeah.
I miss her every week, you know, we talked every day.So um but you know, I had to ask them like just honestly, and it's not because I was trying to got you anything.
Right.
Guilt anybody.I was really trying to just understand it.Like, okay, these are very principled, decent people.They're the good guys.So how come, you know, this happens?So it's it's structural.A lot of stuff is structural, you know.
They explore how racism can be both overt and subtle in Hollywood and why black creators are often judged by different standards. Jafa argues that black culture is central to American culture and that industry gatekeeping is built into the system.
I agree with you on that that invisibility note, because when I worked at Vogue, I saw how a lot of things just happened background, you know?And I would I was like, "Oh, they don't see us."They just don't see us.
Yeah.
Like if they're like casting for something, it we're not top of mind.
Yeah.
And I didn't I mean, it's racist, but I didn't even think it was like an out right racism.I don't know how to describe it because it was just like this invisibility and and for me it was always top of mind.
I mean, look,
like I can tell you stories, man, that I've experienced or things that people share with me.Sometimes it is overt and blatant.
Yes.
Like a good friend of mine, man, she was on this film project in Hollywood, a television thing, and she just stood her ground on some things they wanted to producers wanted to change, and she was like, "I didn'tcome this far to represent this particular character in this way."Cuz it was a historical figure.And I'm just not going to have It wasn't something she actually did.
Mhm.
The actual person didn't do it, and she just refused to have a scene where the person did this thing.
Mhm.
And she just says, "I'm not going to do it."And man, the letter they sent her, like, black
You what?
director in Hollywood.This is like not no subtle This like overt racism is going on all the time, but there's also mostly the
tight-lipped.
It's just not about you.They're not thinking about you.They're thinking about themselves, you know?
Yeah.
Like I said, if you understand the psychological complexity of like say just being Jewish in Hollywood, how comp- complicated that is, then you can see they got their own concerns.They're not really You know, God bless the child, you know?This guy has his own.So, you know, so you can enter that, even if you want to present yourself as at least political, least uh you know, just want to get along kind of negro.I just want to get along and be in the game.Like they're not dumb.They know like black Americans in particular, as opposed to like say black Brits, like you see this a lot around the acting thing, right?
What are your thoughts on that?Do you think that like black British people should be playing black African-American roles or
I think people should play the roles they're capable of playing.I'm not anti-black Brits.But at the same time, it is a thing.
It is a thing.
It is a thing of casting black British actors and some of it is because of training.They're very well trained.
Mhm.
It's a different kind of training than American actors get.Um classical training.But a lot of it is cuz they don't got the same psychological baggage, tension with white Americans who are casting them that black Americans do.They just don't got the same it's not it's not the same social
I get what you're saying.
tethering.
You said something to me when we were on the phone and I and I and I and I think it relates to this.Um You said to me about Daughters of the Dust and Julie Dash.She said, "If Toni Morrison had only been able to write The Bluest Eye, would she have been known as Toni Morrison?"
Right.
And I wanted you to unpack that for me cuz I think it's it's speaking to what you're saying right now.
It's the same thing.
Yeah.
Julie hated it.She would hate when I would say that.
No, you know, she wouldn't say don't say it, but you know, she didn't like it because I was like, "Look, Daughters of the Dust is one of the most auspicious debuts in the history of American cinema."
Period.
Indisputably.Hands down.
Like nobody made a better first film.Outside of like Orson Welles's Citizen Kane or something like that.But it is the equivalent of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
Mhm.
You know, like if Toni Morrison had only published The Bluest Eye, is she even Toni Morrison?That means there's no Sula, which is clearly a greater novel than The Bluest Eye.There's no Song of Solomon, there's no Beloved, there's no Paradise, there's no You know what I mean?So, I'm not trying to construct Julie as this wholly unrealized.She's done some amazing things.
Yes.
But you know, we don't know what Julie was capable of, because she wasn't allowed to do what she was capable of doing, because you know, we spent all that time and years developing Daughters and successfully making it againstall against the grain, against all this resistance.I mean, the things people said to us as we were trying to get that film.I never forget
What?
Uh at one point, it was we were trying to get money from the National Endowment of the Humanities.
I don't know if that exists anymore.
I think the NEA, it doesn't exist anymore, but and there were two black insider powerful members of the people who made the decisions about grants.
Okay, they're like on a board.
And they sent us a letter in response to the script for Daughters that said, "What about the farmer in Idaho?"
I like
Right.
a white male who's making a film about farmers in Idaho, nobody's going to say to them, "What about the black woman in South Carolina?What's in this for them?"
Right, right.
It's so pathological and twisted, you know?Um but and this kind of it's so much of it.It's so it's a tidal wave of it that you have to contend with just coming up.So, it's no surprise how few people have fully actualized their talents, you know?I'm just saying, like I was saying with the Hendrix versus the Keith Richards thing.
Right.
It just there's a lot of there's a lot of hurdles you got to deal with and very few people particularly sensitive artistic types are ultimately equipped to manage all of it.It's unrealistic, you know?It's unrealistic to expect Michael Jordan is going to play the game and drive the bus to the gig at the same time.It just doesn't And that's what it means to be a black creative in these spaces, you know?It's not like music or something like that where there's all this infrastructure in place.And there's a reason for the resistance to black folks coming into these spaces.Like I said, like I was about to say I didn't even finish it last time.It's like the black person could present themselves as like, "I'm the most get-along kind of person.I want to make Soul Plane.You know what I mean?
I'm not trying to make no political I'm just trying to make Friday or something, whatever."But first of all, it doesn't make it betrays itself.Just the fact that you want to make a film about black characters shows you're not just about business.
Mhm.
Cuz why would you make a film in a ostensibly white supremacist environment that's primarily directed at 13% of the population?Now, we know it doesn't really work like that.Like black music is an example there.Black folks have sang more or less what they want to sing about.Not completely, but you know, to a certain degree.But the audience for black music is very different.Like as Berry Gordy said, you know, the founder of Motown years ago, did he make music for black people?He said, "I make music for the consumers of black music."
Mhm.
Which means it was larger than just a black audience.So, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean you don't envision a large audience, but if you know how charged it is in terms of films, like, "Oh, Eddie Murphy.Okay, he's the biggest star in the world at a certain point in America, but it doesn't translate supposedly to Europe and overseas, so there's a cap on the budgets."
Mhm.
Or Denzel or you know, you know what I'm saying?They say it doesn't translate.So, there are all these kinds of things, whereas you know, like a white artist doesn't have to contend with that stuff.People assume that if it's a hit here, it could be a hit somewhere else.And the thing is is so much of it just comes down to a sort of assumed racism on the part of audiences and stuff.And so, you know, as soon as you as a black filmmaker say you want to make a film about even the most seemingly innocuous stuff.It betrays the fact that it's not just about business, cuz it was just about the business, you'd be trying to make Pretty Woman or something with Julia Roberts, you know?Why would you make a thing that in a narrowly racialized environment was going to only play to 13% of the audience?
You make a thing that was going to play to 80% of an audience.
Well, this is the thing that's interesting to me about that is so, black culture is American culture.And American
American culture is black culture.
Right.
No, let's be straight up about
No, no, no, no, I I I think it exactly.It's like American culture
American culture is a subset of black culture.Black culture is not a subset of American culture.
No, I mean to say that it it's co-opted by Americans and it is like it becomes a stand-in, right?And I think what's interesting is that American culture then is the biggest export that we have, right?So, then we're essentially disseminating black culture internationally, right?
sure.
And so, even despite the fact that if we're making a film for {quote} 13%, we're actually making a film for everybody, because if we're
Well, the thing about it is it's like anything, people have uh they have financial equations that they make or rationalize what they invest in and what they don't invest in.Like, I never forget seeing this interview with Jodie Foster on Charlie Rose, like probably 30 years ago.Honestly, I never forgot it.She was directing her first film as a director and she was talking about getting a deal for the project and she was saying she realized after going to so many meetings and pitching her projects that when that studioexecutive, who was by and large going to be a white man, sat on the other side of that desk and saw her pitching the project, they didn't say yes or no based on the viability of the project.They said yes or no based on whether they saw a younger person version of themselves sitting on the other side of the table.
Because there was no real
There was no real verifiable logic around what's going to be hit and what's not going to be hit.If a film with three white guys running around blowing up is a flop, nobody says that a film with three guy white guys running around blowing a flop can be a hit.They just say that that film wasn't a hit.
Right.Right.
But if a film with three black people going around blowing up they say it.Hey, all those films are not they don't work.They don't work.They don't travel.They don't this.And so, um You know what I mean?So, it's it's got to do with the equation that's being utilized uh to determine whether something is viable or not.So, when she said and hear her that when that person it presents itself as just business, but it's not business.It's more complicated than that.When that person looks across and sees a young at the time closeted white gay woman, they don't identify.They don't see themselves.They're not reaching back in history to a younger version of themselves and pulling them forward.So, you know, if I'm sitting there, it's like they not only do not see themselves, they see something or someone who's almost in a sense antithetical to how they understand the thing is supposed to work.
Right.
Because basically what I was trying to get at is like even if I present myself as the most get-along negro, apolitical person, like look, they know black people come to up.I'm sorry.We just do.It's just cultural.We come to do extra.We come to do more.We come to dunk the ball instead of just taking the layup.That's what we do.And so, if you have a del- very delicately balanced mechanism, then you're not trying to have Well, to take the title of the New York Times thing, you're not trying to have people disrupt that shit."It's not so much against you per se.It's just like we don't want any disruptions in the machine.So,
Jafa discusses how he entered the art world, why his success feels ambivalent, and how black artists historically faced exclusion. He offers a provocative theory that his success may reflect a contradiction within white supremacy itself.
That's real.I I agree with you.Cuz that's Yeah.Wow.That's very very deep.Can we talk about how you did wind up
in the art world?
Yeah, and disrupting the art world world because
I don't know if I I don't think I'm disrupting the art world.I think that um the art world has changed quite a lot and it's changed and uh it's like the cat's out of the bag.It's never going back in the bag because there's too much money's been made.
Off of
Well, like like I said, prior to a certain point, there were no black artists.It's not because there wasn't any black talent.But like as soon as like the use the baseball analogy, as soon as the the LA Dodgers or the Brooklyn Dodgers say, "We're going to take on a black player."Then all the other teams are in de facto forced to take on black players because otherwise they can't stay competitive.
Mhm.
Like if you have one team in any sport that had exclusive access to the best black players, who could beat them?You couldn't.They would be unbeatable.
Right.
Like look, if in the NBA one team had exclusive access to all the best white players, nobody could beat them.Nobody could accumulate if they had to split the best black players amongst the other 30 teams, but one team could have Luka, Jokic, you know, maybe only like nobody could compete with them.
Mhm.
And so, it's an exclusivity thing.And so, once Branch Rickey brings Jackie Robinson and then Roy Campanella to the Dodgers, the other teams don't have a choice if they want to stay competitive.So Basquiat can come in and it's an exception and he you know was destroyed by the talent is undeniable but he was 27 years old when he died.He didn't make it to 30 and he didn't make it to 30 for the same reasons that Jimi Hendrix didn't make it to 30.Right?Because unlike Keith Richards he didn't have a circle of people around him who are invested in him surviving or cuz see the problem with that if you're Jimi Hendrix or Basquiat and you're flying to Sweden and Switzerland andall this kind of even the friends you have who are let's say organic friends, they can't fly with you unless you bring them.
Unless you bring them yourself.They can't they don't it's outside of their experience so you're going to find yourself by and large in these contexts is where you're going to be the only black person.You're going to be isolated, you know?I mean I'm I'm 65 years old.You know and even then for me like when I had my first entree into the art thing I was 40.And very quickly this is back in 2000 you know I got traction really fast.I got traction super fast but within 2 years 18 months I was like I'm not doing this cuz for one thing it was segregated.It was apartheid.I just got tired of going to parties where I was only black face and that's at 40.Right.That's at 40.I couldn't process it.I just was like I'd rather be a failed filmmaker, you know?
Cuz at least there was a community there.And so you know I found myself back in the art world at 50 when I had I'm not thinking about it when I made Love is the message.It never occurred to me that Love is the message could show in the art context or it could lead to all the things that it you know led to but um um you know I'm just old
I mean I you know I go to parties now and sometimes me and Gavin we laugh about it sometimes because I made him acutely aware fairly early on like it's not weird for you but it is weird forme when I go to these parties and I'm the only black face.
Mhm.
I'm like what am I the only black person invited to a KKK meeting?it's like Dave Chappelle or something.You know?Like
Oh my god.
saying if you don't have some ability to just understand the structural
Yeah.
Which is not to say it's not a KKK meeting.It just means for whatever reason they're comfortable with you being there.So that in itself is like why are they comfortable with me being there?It's the same question I ask myself is like why are they comfortable with me making the work that I make?It's not because black people are here some you know a big market buying art because my art is by and large not bought by black folks.You know I do have some black collectors but 99% of the people who buy my work are not black.So
And you and Love is the Message is a very black piece of art.
Very particular.
Yeah exactly.
Seven minutes of the violence, the beauty, the the celebration, the the extraness of being black.And that and that was not bought by
It's the most perplexing thing of my life.I've never forget people just buying it cuz people buy things for all kinds of reasons not all of them necessarily positive but man I can't tell you I'm not exaggerating when I say over the last 10 years easilyfour or five thousand people have come up to me non-black people and said I cried when I saw Love is the Message.
How do you feel about that?
Well my feelings have evolved you know over 10 years but initially I was very disturbed by it.I couldn't quite account for it.I couldn't didn't know how I was supposed to respond to it.I probably said some things that weren't particularly nice, you know, at a certain point to people.But I was just very troubled by it.And I was troubled by how it made me, you know, the conclusions, what it seemed to suggest about Love Is the Message.Is there something up about this thing that I don't quite understand?Or else, why else would people be so moved by it?
Mhm.
I mean you move by this art, but like they're still killing black people every day.
moved enough to do something systemically about it.
not that I made it like I didn't make it for white folks.
Right.
And then maybe over the next month or two, I refined it.But basically the beginning, middle, and the end were always the beginning, middle, and the end.I just refined it a bit.And then eventually added Kanye's music to it.Which it I didn't, you know, when I first assembled it.I didn't have it.I had never heard the music.I saw the music like 3 days later on when he was on Saturday Night Live and thought, "Oh god, that's an interesting song."And just unconsciously, spontaneously put the two together and said, "Wow, that's interesting."But uh you know, so I don't know.I mean, it would take a some kind of psychoanalytic institute to fully map out the complexity of how Love Is the Message has been received and how it's moved people and how it seems at odds with the worldwe live in, you know?
I mean I mean that was a different time than this Trump post-DMI time that this is now.
era.
Yeah, but it was like a time where Trayvon Martin and all this black It wasn't like a good time.It was just a different time.So,
I don't I don't know.Like I have a piece in the new show.It's just a text piece.It's just metal text that's on the wall and it says, "Arthur Jafa is a death wish of white supremacy."Cuz it's one of the few things that I could kind of come up with to explain or account for my success.
Mhm.
Meaning
Yeah.
What it's suggesting is that it doesn't matter what the structure is.Like at the core of Nazism is a seed that wants to unwind Nazism.Wants to undermine it.At the core of democracy is a seed of fascism.It means it's like a very psychoanalytic read.That's what a death wish is.It's something that is neurotically counter like on a certain level.Like you know I remember reading so much like I was really fascinated by uh the logic the not not like S&M in itself, but the whole culture of S&M.Uh cuz I knew this woman who was a a black a sister I knew and she made a living as a dominatrix.And she was like, "Yo, this is a good business.There's so many white folks who want me
Right.
to dominate them and they're all successful white male executives and things like that and they want to be submissives.They don't want to be They don't want to be tops.Cuz that's all they do
Right right right right right.
in real life in everyday life.And so there's always an impulse to experience it's an equilibrium thing.It's a balance thing like yin and yang.If there's too much yin, there needs to be some yang.So like I think on some level my success is somewhat not to be jaded uh demonic about it.It's somewhat powered by some unconscious desire on the part of white supremacy to not be what it is.To undermine itself, you know?
I don't know.It's just speculation, but it ain't because this society love black folks, you know?That's not why I'm succeeding.
He reflects on whether he can celebrate his wins, emphasizing gratitude, freedom, and the ability to support his family. The segment closes with his sense of being accompanied by loved ones and guardian spirits.
Is that why you like you were saying I'm an ambivalent towards my success?
Uh I mean like I think any conscious person has a question, am I making some up That's why I'm succeeding because like you know, if the clan show up for your art, you must assume that there's something aboutit that is in alignment with the clan's attitudes about black people.Like if a bunch of clans, I'm not saying white folks are all clans people, but I'm just saying structurally speaking, one is trying to account for especially in the context where historically you could be the most genius personever and still not even be able to get in the game.
Mhm.
Like black artists to certain degree, certainly at a certain point, you have to be Michael Jordan just to get in the game.Right.The bar was so high.It was unrealistic.
Yeah.
And it's not like because the context is so high.Because so many white artists, the majority by and large of white artists are mediocre.
They're not in here having a successful career because people are going to be talking about them 100 years from now, even 50 or even 10 years from now.You know?So, it's a unrealistic bar that you got to be LeBron James or Michael Jordan just to get in the game.None of us can can stand up to that.It's too much pressure.You know?And it's just you know, like I said, that's a that's a Beethoven That's once in a hundred years you get a person like that.So, so one has unnecessarily I think questioned the nature of one's success.Like, who is it what is it about your work that's appealing to audience that historically and structurally speaking not necessarily so pro-black, you know?Does that mean your work is not pro-black?I mean, I had a young artist say to me he thought I was like a neo-conservative.
They thought I was uh neo-conservative and anti-black.And I was like, you know, I don't know.
Why did they think that?I think it's probably
I could say cuz they're crazy, but but I will say I was like, look, I may be a lot of things.I might be neo-conservative.I don't know.You have to explain that one to me, but I know I'm not anti-black.
Right.I know.
You know, I'm fairly confident in that.So, but you don't know.Like, when you You know what I'm saying?
So, do you celebrate your wins?
Do I celebrate my wins?
Do you allow yourself to celebrate your wins?Cuz you're on the eve of this huge survey.And I'm curious if you've allowed yourself to like sink that in or
I'm very invested or careful not to drink my own Kool-Aid.
Okay.I see that.
Yeah.I mean, I got to eat go like anybody else and I'm very I feel very blessed
Yeah.
you know, with my success and I feel very thankful that I'm able to provide for my kids and my family and I'm able to be supportive of people around me uh if I choose to and that uh youknow, it's afforded me a lot of time to think.
Mhm.
Uh I'm by and large not doing anything I don't want to do now.
That's that is
perfect, but
Freedom.Yeah.
You know, but I'm by and large only doing things that I want to do now.Uh there's still things other things that I want to do that maybe we'll see, but I'm not really doing anything I don't want to do.And so, I feel like pretty blessed by that, but I don't know about celebrating my wins.I don't know.It's a win to be in the game.
Right.
You know?Like not to have such a low bar of what winning might mean, but yeah, it's a win to be in the game.And so, I'm very appreciative.I feel very um you know, I was at when I was in Venice uh you know,
To Richard Prince.
with the Richard Prince show um I you know, Prada Foundation.Um you know, I had a lot of friends showed up for me and I felt very uh uh cherished.You know, loved.I felt like a lot of love.UmSo, I'm very appreciative of that.
Jafa speaks candidly about wanting love in his life and the difficulty of dating while traveling. He also shares details about upcoming film projects, including a love story and a violent sci-fi action film, plus the actors he hopes to cast.
I always feel the presence of
my guardian angels and my friend Greg who passed take past 3 4 years ago.You know, I feel always um accompanied.I mean, I never feel like you know, even though I'm in these spaces like I say all the time when I look up and I'm the only black person here.All the time guys happen to look over at me like
I see you're the only black person here, but um but I never feel alone.
Mhm.
In a strange kind of way.So, I don't know.
I love that.
Yeah.
I think as an artist to A have freedom and B never feel alone, I think is that in and of itself is
No.
No what?
add I do feel some of my son was just teasing me because when I was at Basel they did this thing and they just asked me something like, you know, where you at in your life or something likethat and I just said casually, cuz I was like not thinking about it as Basel.I would just, you know what I mean?I just try to answer as honestly and as transparent as I can.I was like, "Everything is great, you know, everything is going good.It's going to good like, you know, but you know, I am looking for love in my life so and that's been like complicated.It's been really complicated."Um
Because you're travel you
I don't know.I mean, some of that's the mechanical answer to it like people say, "Well, you're just so busy.You're not available to it."But I would be available if there was somebody to be available to, you know?
Did you hear it heard it here first.
Huh?Oh, yeah.I don't even know what I'm talking about this.
But it's like just like it's almost like there's a degree to which I don't want to say anything that's not really true about my life because I feel like in a weird kind of way that's fixing it orsomething.So, I try to be not just transparent but precise about what I You know what I'm saying?So, you know, there's still lots of things that I would like to accomplish and put in place.Some personal and some professional.
I love that you said that cuz it's a very real thing.We all want that type of companionship
It's complicated out here.
It is.Dating Wait, isn't your next film a romance?
Uh
well, my hope, I mean, you know, I have a script that's a love story.But I also have this other thing which is very much not a love story.It's a violent sci-fi action thing that seems like it might go first.
Okay.
It's hard to say, you know, I'm sort of available to whatever flies will fly.So, come hell or high water, you know, next year I'm going to I'm going to be making a film.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
So, and when we when we talked on the phone, you were talking about casting, and I was wondering if there was anyone that you've you've dreamt about casting in any of these films.
Well, yeah.Well, the love story uh Alfre Woodard is already attached.They have been attached for a while.
Amazing.
Yeah.And I'm very particular, you know, about who I want to work with.Yeah.You know, like the love story I've been like working on it with Karen Pittman.
Oh, wow.
time.I love her.She's the best.She's the best.
Ah.
She's the best.
Is she playing the lead?Or if you can say.Okay, we'll see.Okay.
you know.These things are always contingent, but she certainly has been attached to the project for a while.
Yeah.
I consider her a good friend, and I consider her the best out here, honestly.
Uh and then the other thing, you know, that people that I I want, you know.
Yeah.
And I feel confident that I can get whoever I want.
I agree.
You know,
cuz I just think it's not like there's a ton of like super incredible roles out here for black actors.
Mhm.Unfortunately.Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sadly.Or there not enough to go around.So, outside of a handful, two or three maybe people, you know, I don't know if I can get Denzel if I wanted him.
I'm feel like Denzel would take your call.
Yeah, he might take my call, but I don't know.
You all you you worked on Malcolm X together.
That was a long time ago.
Well, it's a full circle.
Denzel is in a completely different
He is.He is.
place in his career.
He remembers the late actor Michael Wright and recounts a memorable dinner where Wright performed Miles Davis all night. Jafa uses the story to reflect on timing, talent, and the people who show up for a project.
My understanding is like he's about to wind it down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.He's winding down.
But, I mean, no, you know, Denzel is obviously incredible.Like my favorite actor just passed recently, uh Michael Wright.
Which one's Michael Wright?
Michael Wright, he he starred in a lot of things, but the thing maybe a lot of people know him for is Five Heartbeats.
He plays the David Ruffin character in Five Heartbeats.
I loved him.
He just passed in the last
did.
like three or four weeks.
Yeah.
He was my favorite actor.I wanted to work with him.Uh I had a crazy experience with him way back way back when Daughters of the Dust was first in the theater.
Okay.
This is like Daughters not even nationally, just in New York at the Film Forum.And Daughters was the toast of the town.Like, it was exciting.There were lines every screening around the block.Julie was on the Today show like 2 days after opened at Film Forum.It was like pre-social media a phenomena, like a sneaker drop or something.It was crazy.And so, we were the toast of the town and Julie and one of the producers like, "Oh, we're going to have dinners at this restaurant called Jezebel's."
Okay.
You remember Jezebel's?
I don't remember.I wasn't in New York at that time.
It was called Jezebel's.It was like a Cajun place, I guess, something.And uh it was Michael Wright's mom owned it.
Oh, wow.
So, Michael Wright was this young at the time black actor who had trained at the studio.He had come through all the stuff that Brando and all those people come through.He was really phenomenal.
Yeah.
I had seen him in this Robert Altman movie called Streamers, which was still to this day like made the most incredible performance I'd ever seen by a black male actor in anything.It's just unbelievable.Volcanic.
Yeah.
And I'll never forget I cut it out.I still have it to this day almost going on 30 years later a one-page image of Michael Wright black and white in Vanity Fair said, "Is America ready for a black Brando?"I'll never forget this.And he was attached to a bunch of things that never happened, but he eventually did do Five Heartbeats.
Mhm.
And that performance just gives you a sense of what he was capable of.But anyway, Daughters is in the theater.We are invited to dinner and we go there, and Michael Wright's mom owns a theater.He has his own personal table in the restaurant.I said the theater, in the restaurant.
Yeah.
Right?And so, we get there, and he's at his table.
Oh, wow.
So, we were like, "Wow, Michael Wright."And we He came over to say hello to us, and he knew the doors was in the theater.And I said, "Man, you're my favorite actor."He said He sat down with us, and we're talking.I said, "You know, my dream project is I want to make a film about Miles Davis, and I think you're the perfect Miles Davis."
Absolutely.
And he immediately started doing his version of Miles Davis.
Wow.
And he stayed in character the whole night.It was the weirdest, strangest, most incredible experience.It was like we had dinner with Miles Davis.
Right, right, right.Right.
With the voice, and the whole thing was crazy.And of course, you know, never got it together, but man, it was such an amazing But Michael Wright, yeah, you know, I just feel like you know, if the time is right,
Right.
the people show up for your projects.
Jafa explains the title of his New Museum show, linking Tony Williams, Miles Davis, and his own artistic lineage. He also discusses pieces in the show, including older works, paintings, and the balance between what he has made and what he still wants to make.
Wait, I'm so excited.I want to talk about your show, your new show, um briefly, before I let you go.I Am Tony.Why Tony Williams?
Uh that's funny.It's set up.I'm talking
It's a set up.
Because people keep asking me why why I Am Tony.Um, you know, I think it's a provocative title.It's somewhat mysterious title.Not everybody knows who Tony Williams is.
He's I think, arguably, the greatest drummer in the history of jazz, which is like saying the greatest god in, you know, Olympus, something.It's like jazz is the context of the world's the greatest drummers that have ever been.So, to say that a person to even nominate a person to be the greatest in that context is something to be said in itself, you know.So, in some ways, it's uh it's sort of bragging in an offhanded kind of way.
You know.As opposed to I am the greatest, which I don't think I am, but you know, I'm in the game, but to say I am Tony is largely aspirational, I guess.
But also just real like recently, I was talking to a journalist and they asked me about the title.And when I was talking to him, something occurred to me that had never really occurred to me before that.In a way, by saying I am Tony, I am, in a sense, implying or inferring, at least, that I am a student or an acolyte, at least, of Miles Davis.
Mhm.
And Miles Davis, I would say probably is the single most significant um artistic entity in my own.I wouldn't go so far as to call him a hero because he was a very problematic person,
Mhm.
uh up person in a lot of ways, but artistically, I probably could say, you know, at 65, like he definitely is my single at the end of the day greatest artistic model.I mean, there are other people, Jack Kirby,
Mhm.
who created the Marvel Universe, is a person.Harlan Ellison, the science fiction writer.Different people who've had a really profound impact on me, but at the Stanley Kubrick,
Mhm.
you know, but at the end of the day, Miles.Definitely Miles.
So, I would never say I am Miles.
Not only because that would be an undesirable thing to to say ethically,
Okay.
because of his complexity as a person, but also because that's like saying I am Beethoven.So, you know.
Right.Mhm.
Not that I think Tony Williams is not Beethoven of the drums, but you know, very few people a lot of people don't know who Tony Williams is, you know.So, so that's part of it.There's some other aspects of it that I'm sort of uhyou know, I don't want to talk about, I guess.
Okay.
Yeah.
You go see the show, I think some of those things
will pop out.
Yeah.
Okay.
Become apparent.Um
Were there any pieces in the show that you've been wanting to make for years and just haven't been able to?
Uh there are pieces in the show that not new pieces, but things like Ben Gazzara, which is a Taxi Driver
Mhm.
project
Mhm.
that, you know, I think few people here have seen.
Uh even though it did open in New York originally, but you know, it was at Gladstone for 3 or 4 weeks.If you didn't If you didn't catch it, you didn't catch it.
And it's hasn't anywhere else in the US.So, this will be the first time it's been presented for this amount of time.And uh that's a piece that I conceived 30 years ago, you know, that I was able to make.
Um so, yeah, there's some things in here wouldn't I don't know about.This one is so much about things that I wanted to make, you know, I certainly have a whole collection of things I like to make that I haven't been in a position to make for one reason or another.Mostly finances, but um but now, this show is really sort of uh a gathering of things that I like, that I've made, you know.
It's a survey, like I said, not a retrospective, but a survey of things that I've made, that I like, that I stand, you know, I still stand behind, I'm not embarrassed by.
Made a lot of things I'm embarrassed by and wouldn't necessarily it wouldn't be my inclination to show them now.
Okay.
But these are all things that I like.And some new things that I'm excited about, as well.
You mentioned paintings.
Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I didn't know I didn't know that you were a a painter.I I wasn't looking close enough.
in the way a proper painter is a painter.
Right.
Like they live for it.I don't live for it, but I um I'm interested in pictures.Obviously, and paintings are pictures.They're rarefiedyou know, exclusive kind of picture, but you know, so I'm interested in paintings and interested in making them, painting them, having them painted, all kinds of stuff.So so there you know, quite a few like in addition to the videos, in addition to the sculptural stuff, there's a lot of paintings, like non-photographic kind of pictures in the show.
That's beautiful.I can't wait to
We'll see.
He describes his approach to exhibition design as layered, jazzy, and intentionally challenging rather than minimal. The conversation ends with hair, style, and his plan to wear a press curl for the opening.
Um you you previously said that your model for a great solo show is a great group show to multiply proliferate and collaborate with selves present and former.
Yeah.Well, I just mean like the effect.
Okay.
The effect I always thought it goes both ways.I think a great solo show for me is a show that looks like the greatest group show you ever went to.But a great group show feels as coherent as like a great solo show.
Mhm.
You know, disparate but still somehow holds together.
That's something that's you know, even like with less is more with the show at MoMA.
Right.
It's it's very much bound up with some of my ideas about how I want to present my work.Uh ideas of order or disorderliness.Uh to use a term that she uses a lot now uh issues of decidedness, what it means to be beside um another entity being whatever.Um as I said, I said in a conversation with Thomas Slacks at MoMA, I was like, "The answer to disorder in the world is not genocide."You know?It's something like how do we coexist?
Yeah.
But it's not erasure.
Right.
So I'm very interested in presenting work in a way that you know, would probably just feel cacophonous or like a lot.Like less is more.You know, I'm very interested in I'm not interested in doing the classic, you know, these pictures space like this in the
Yeah.
empty space.I mean, it's nothing in a way new about it.It's just a salon.What would we call the salon style of uh displaying pictures and stuff, you know, where you just have a lot of things.
Correct.
You know, I know when I first laid the show out like on the computer there was definitely some real pushback from everybody.Like yeah, I was like, "It's too much.It's too this.It's too chaotic."Uh the collective thing is undermining the power of the individual works.
Okay.
I mean, it's the kind of thing I would be more um open to altering if it was like a gallery show where ostensibly you're trying to sell things.Cuz then that makes it like a window display.If you say, "Hey, by putting this thing this in this way it's going to disrupt you know, people's ability to see the individual artifact."But like I'm not interested in that here.Now, I'm interested in creating uh an experience.
Mhm.
You know?That is greater than the sum total, you know, of the individual works.And so um you know, it's a slave ship.It's like things tethered.
Mhm.
Learning how to get along with each other in the process of becoming something else and ultimately emerging into some other sort of beingness.I know that's kind of poetic or something, but but you know so I'm interested in that.I'm interested in people going in there and then not being like you know, like my main thing with my art in general is I don't want to make remedial work.
Mhm.
I don't want to make work that's A is for apple, B is for ball, C is for cat.But I also don't want to present the work that I make in a remedial fashion.
Right.
I want to present it in a challenging uh complex uh syncopated sort of way, you know?And so it's in some ways like post uh less is more, but it's the first not the first time.52 Walker was really the first time where I tried to make it work, you know?It's like jazzy to me, honestly.
I can see that.
just want it to be jazzy.I don't want it to be like classical.You know, I want it to be jazzy.You know, I want it to be like hip-hop, you know?I want it to have
uh be savage, have uh not be nice and have force and have like the Wu-Tang Clan.
Somebody asked me, "What's your motto?What's your ambition for this show in terms of like comps, you know?"And I was like, "Uncle Wafo's."
Oh, right.You did say this.
You know?It's like I just think her thing is amazing.The way she's cracked open the DJ thing.
Yeah.
You know, and I just want to show that people experience as much as just go see.
Yeah.
You know, so
That sounds amazing.Well I can't wait to see it next week.We didn't even talk about your hair.We could That's a whole other episode.
Yeah, the hair thing.We'll see.My friend Nikki is going to do my hair for the opening.
Who?Nikki Nelms.Nikki Nelms does your braids?No, Nikki doesn't do it.I can't afford Nikki to be doing my braids.It's really incredible.Sister Amber does my hair generally, but you know, but Nikki, that's my girl.Nikki is the best.
the best.She's the goat.
on my film projects.She worked on Bingo my taxi driver thing.Uh I met Nikki working on Solange's video.
Oh, okay.
Like years ago.
Okay.
And we've been friends since.She's the best and she uh you know.You know, I have her penciled in for my film projects and stuff.But she's going to bless me with uh something extravagant.
Can we say what it is?
yeah.I'm
Is it Is it ala David Banner?
Well, I don't want to say that just because this preceded David Banner.
Okay, okay.
As a fellow Mississippian, I don't want to be like I'm not really following David Banner.I love His thing was incredible.When I saw it, I was like, "Oh, shit."
He's with my you know what I mean?But like my daughter and people have been after me to do this for a while.So, I figured this is like a 10th anniversary show, the closest thing.So, I think I will uh you know, at least for one night, I'm going to go ahead and pull out the
the pressing curl?
the press curl, yeah.
This is as Mississippi as it gets.
It's pretty Mississippi.
Super Mississippi.That's the thing.That's why I'm saying like you know, DJ Quick, David Banner, I'm coming for y'all, you know.So.
I can't wait to see it.
Yeah.
Thank you so much, AJ.
Thanks for having me.
This was brilliant.
The host thanks Jafa and wraps up the episode with a brief sign-off. The final sentence is a stray closing utterance after the outro.
Well, that's it for this week, BBs.I want to thank my guest, the iconic Arthur Jafa, for joining me today.And thank you so much for listening.I hope you loved this conversation as much as I did.If you want to show your auntie some love, Be sure to subscribe to our Substack for more auntie updates, share this episode with your group chat, and leave us a review in the App Store.It makes a world of difference.You can also follow us on all social platforms at Your Favorite Auntie Show.Until next time, auntie sends her love.
Mhm.