Love is the Message, The Message is Death

2016
Arthur Jafa

Video (color, sound)

7min. 25sec.

This seven-minute video montage features footage of 1960s civil rights demonstrations, Malcolm X, Drake, Beyoncé and Walter Scott, a 50-year-old African-American shot dead by a white policeman in 2015. It is a subjective immersion into the history of the African-American community. 

Arthur Jafa released Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (the title refers to a song by MFSB and a short story by James Tintree) just after the 2016 US presidential election. It highlights the hardships but also the strength and beauty of Black America in the face of omnipresent racism and police brutality.

Arthur Jafa's Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death is being shown for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the “Untitled, 2020” exhibition at the Punta della Dogana (2020).

Exhibitions
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Courtesy Arthur Jafa and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/ Rome
Detail, video-still: Hortense Spillers.