Due to inclement weather, this program has been rescheduled for June 25, 2026.
Join artist Arthur Jafa and poet Simone White for a conversation about the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Arthur Jafa—Less Is Morbid.
Admission to this program is free, but registration is required.
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) is an artist and filmmaker. Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artifacts, and happenings that reference and question the universal and specific articulations of Black being. Underscoring the many facets of Jafa’s practice is a recurring question: How can visual media, such as objects, static and moving images, transmit the equivalent “power, beauty, and alienation” embedded within forms of Black music in US culture? Jafa’s films have garnered acclaim at the Los Angeles, New York, and Black Star film festivals, and his artwork is represented in collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the High Museum Atlanta, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others.
Simone White (b. 1972, Middletown, Connecticut) is a poet and critic. She is the author of five books of poetry and prose, including the forthcoming Warring, about the poethical effects of contemporary rap music. Recent poetry and prose pieces have appeared in the Paris Review, the Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Frieze, and Mousse magazines, among others. Her work has received awards from the Whiting Foundation, Creative Capital, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Since 2018, she has served on the English faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently associate professor of English and associate faculty director of Kelly Writers House. She also serves on the writing faculty at Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
This program is made possible through the generous support of the Black Arts Council and the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.