LeRage

Arthur Jafa’s LeRage is a confrontational, human-scale cutout that functions as a form of visual self-portraiture. The work draws on Jafa’s childhood fascination with science fiction, comic books, and fanzines, translating popular visual culture into a symbolic exploration of power, vulnerability, and emotional presence. By isolating the character against large expanses of negative space, the composition intensifies the figure’s psychological and expressive charge, reflecting Jafa’s ongoing interest in scale as a tool for shaping how Black identity is perceived and experienced.

Trained in architecture and filmmaking at Howard University, Jafa developed a practice that merges spatial thinking with cinematic sequencing. Central to his work is the concept of “Black Intonation,” a visual rhythm inspired by the emotional and structural power of Black music. Rather than constructing linear narratives, Jafa assembles imagery from magazines, archives, television, and digital platforms into collage-like compositions that operate through juxtaposition. Influenced by montage theorists such as early twentieth-century experimental filmmakers, his method allows fragments of history – violence, celebration, resistance, spirituality, and everyday life – to coexist within a single visual field, generating emotional and intellectual resonance.

Over three decades, Jafa has worked across film, video installation, painting, and sculpture, often using found footage as the basis of his artistic language. His breakthrough video essay Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death became one of the defining works of contemporary moving-image art and is held in major museum collections worldwide. Later works such as The White Album, awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2019, and digital pieces like AGHDRA continue to explore Black cultural production through assemblage, cinematic layering, and technological experimentation.

Across media, Jafa’s work seeks to reproduce the affective force of Black music while confronting the history, beauty, and violence embedded in contemporary visual culture.