—13 Institutions Around the World Will Participate in 48-Hour Broadcast—
Dallas, TX—June 23, 2020—The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) will join 12 institutions across the world in hosting a 48-hour live streaming of Arthur Jafa’s renowned film Love is the Message, The Message is Death beginning Friday, June 26, at 1:00 p.m. CDT at virtual.DMA.org/love-is-the-message/. This event marks the first time the artist has authorized showing the video outside of a museum or gallery setting.
“I am thrilled for the opportunity, finally, to have as many people as possible see Love is The Message, The Message is Death," says Jafa.
Organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, the event includes the DMA; Glenstone Museum; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin; Luma Arles in France and Luma Westbau in Zürich; Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana – Pinault Collection; The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and the Tate in London. Each participating museum and collection holds an edition of the artwork. In the current moment, the artist and many holders of this artwork agreed that it should be accessible beyond museum walls and to people around the world who might not otherwise encounter it.
Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016) was acquired by the DMA in 2017 and was the centerpiece of the DMA’s exhibition Truth: 24 frames per second, a survey of the Museum’s film and video collection. The video offers a powerfully moving montage of original and appropriated footage—set to Kanye West’s gospel-inflected song “Ultralight Beam”—that explores the mix of joy and pain, transcendence and tragedy that characterizes the Black American experience. Extolled by The New Yorker as “required viewing,” the film points to the ongoing violence and racism against Black people that is foundational to US history and continues to play out in the present. It also shows how Black Americans have taken these experiences and created cultural, political, and aesthetic achievements that are intrinsic to the national identity.
“Through the presentation of works of art and the dialogues we create around them, museums can serve as powerful platforms to deepen public engagement and understanding of pressing issues and the truth of our histories. Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is Death presents an expansive view of history that challenges viewers to reckon with uncomfortable and disturbing truths. We are proud to collaborate with Jafa and peers around the world for this global initiative that broadens the reach and impact of this important work and the issues it illuminates nationally and within our Dallas–Fort Worth community,” said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, The Eugene McDermott Director of the DMA.
The work has particular resonance for the North Texas community. Among the footage Jafa repurposes in the seven-and-a-half-minute film is that of a white police officer violently pushing a 15-year-old Black teenager to the ground during a 2015 pool party in McKinney. Since the work was created, 15-year-old Jordan Edwards was murdered by a Balch Springs police officer, and Botham Jean and Atatiana Jefferson were killed in their homes by Dallas and Fort Worth police, respectively.
“Not only does the film have incredible national relevance during this pivotal moment of reckoning with systemic racism, but it has powerful resonance locally through its depiction of brutal events that took place in our own community. We look forward to sharing this work with an even wider audience following its 2017 presentation at the DMA,” added Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA.
Two roundtable panel discussions convened by the artist will take place on Saturday, June 27 and Sunday, June 28, both at 1:00 p.m. CDT on www.sunhaus.us. Participants on Saturday will be Peter L'Official, Josh Begley, Elleza Kelley, and Thomas Lax, moderated by Tina Campt, and Sunday's participants will be Aria Dean, Rashaad Newsome, Isis Pickens, and Simone White, also moderated by Tina Campt.
About the Artist
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Mississippi) is an artist, filmmaker, and cinematographer. Across three decades, Jafa has developed a dynamic practice comprising films, artefacts, 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 and 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 celebrated collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, High Museum in Atlanta, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Stedelijk, LUMA Foundation, Perez Art Museum in Miami, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many others.
Jafa has recent and forthcoming exhibitions of his work at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Fundação de Serralves, Porto; the 22nd Biennale of Sydney; and the Louisiana Museum of Art, Denmark. In 2019 he received the Golden Lion at the 58th Venice Biennale for the Best Participant in the international exhibition, “May You Live in Interesting Times.”
About the Dallas Museum of Art
Established in 1903, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is among the 10 largest art museums in the country and is distinguished by its commitment to research, innovation, and public engagement. At the heart of the Museum and its programs is its global collection, which encompasses 25,000 works and spans 5,000 years of history, representing a full range of world cultures. Located in the nation’s largest arts district, the Museum acts as a catalyst for community creativity, engaging people of all ages and backgrounds with a diverse spectrum of programming, from exhibitions and lectures to concerts, literary events, and dramatic and dance presentations. With a free general admission policy and community outreach efforts, the DMA served more than 900,000 individuals on-site and off-site in 2019. The DMA is an Open Access institution, allowing all works believed to be in the public domain to be freely available for downloading, sharing, repurposing, and remixing without restriction. For more information, visit DMA.org.
The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
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For more information, please contact:
Jill Bernstein
Director of Communications and Public Affairs
214-922-1802
JBernstein@DMA.org