Arthur Jafa
Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016) & APEX (2013)
Exhibition — Oct 3 until Oct 17, 2025
On the occasion of the world premiere of the theater play Minor Music at the End of the World at ITA Amsterdam (October 3–5, 2025), the Stedelijk is proud to exhibit Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016) from October 3–9, and APEX (2013) from October 10–17.
Both works have been donated by the Hartwig Art Foundation to a shared ownership of the Stedelijk Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and at the Stedelijk in the collection presentation Tomorrow is a Different Day. The photograph Monster (1988) is also part of this donation. Minor Music at the End of the World is based on Saidiya Hartman’s acclaimed essays and includes a film by Arthur Jafa.
- October 3 till 9
- Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016)
- October 10 till 17
- APEX (2013)
About Arthur Jafa
Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, USA) is among the most renowned artists working today, known for his films, videos, photographs, and sculptures. With his work, Jafa seeks to encompass “the full complexity, specificity, beauty, and potentiality of what Black folks have made and continue to make out of the bleak existential circumstance we’ve attended to over the past several hundred years,” as he has described it. To that end, he collects and catalogues images from the histories of cinema, music, design, and pop culture.
Jafa’s extensive research into Black culture and his theories surrounding a “Black aesthetic” led him to produce APEX (2013), an eight-minute video composed of hundreds of images—objects, people, moments, and events—that flash by, set to a driving soundtrack. Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016) is a masterful seven-minute video composed of found and self-shot footage, as well as clips sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and amateur recordings, much of it sourced from the internet.
Credits
1. Still from Arthur Jafa's, Love is the message, The Message is Death (2016), video, 8min, 4s. Gift by the Hartwig Art Foundation to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2018 (c) Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
2, 3, 4, 5. Arthur Jafa, APEX, 2013, videostill. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/RomeArthur Jafa, APEX, 2013, videostill. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome
6. Arthur Jafa. Photo: Robert Hamacher. Courtesy the artist en Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York/Rome