A Decade On, Arthur Jafa Reflects
NEW YORK, United States — The room was abuzz with anticipation as visual artist Arthur Jafa greeted a few folks in the front of the auditorium and prepared to take the stage alongside curator Thomas Lax. This was the first public program dedicated to Jafa’s Artist’s Choice exhibition Less Is Morbid at The Museum of Modern Art. Energetically, it was a wholly refreshing gathering as far as art world programming can go. Jafa appeared free-flowing and associative, curious and giddy, unassuming and open to share — the audience was the ultimate beneficiary.
Thomas Lax and Arthur Jafa, The Museum of Modern Art
In a year already marked by run it back energy, 2016 edition, this fireside chat felt even more poignant than usual. Jafa was tasked to ruminate on his artistic career over the past decade. First unveiled in November 2016, his work Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death debuted in Harlem at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise with much less visibility, but no less impactful than his 2026 curatorial offering. Both exhibitions grazed against an intensely emotional political landscape shaping the United States, with Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death opening a few days after the 2016 presidential election and Less Is Morbid against the current maelstrom that defies understanding. Jafa’s artistic gift, whether in a 7-minute masterpiece film or a handful of walls at MoMA, gently demands a central charge of its audience — an openness to sit with the discomfort and reconsider held beliefs.
With Less Is Morbid, its title inspired by German-American architect Ludwig Mies van de Rohe’s Less Is More, Jafa reflected on initial angst that the exhibition could be considered timid. “I wanted it to be invigorating” he remarked, considering this desire for density that he felt was embodied in the curatorial work of other artists he admired, such as the 2002 exhibition Something Anything by Nayland Blake at Matthew Marks Gallery and the 2019 Artist’s Choice The Shape of Shape at MoMa by Amy Sillman. In Jafa’s words, “nothing is more invigorating than standing in a thunderstorm,” a hearty sentiment that drove how he devised the show.
Jafa repeatedly shared anecdotes of his own personal history, in the time before he considered himself an artist with a capital A, and how the experience of witnessing art of his future peers shaped him. His tongue in cheek humor and referential-heavy manner were on full display, as he wove comparative analyses of James Brown and Bob Dylan, the totemic contribution of the Gee’s Bend quilting tradition to the modern abstraction movement, and the nature of sociality on the ‘assigned vs inherent’ value of art. Each topic could have been a lecture in and of itself. At one point, he mused about his own formally coming to terms with being an artist with “how can you call it a practice if you don’t do it regularly?” Amidst audience laughter, his candor underlined a posture of freedom for someone who has long-existed on the periphery of an industry he is now firmly a part of.
“Nothing is more invigorating than standing in a thunderstorm.”
Another moment of honesty came through in his remarks on internal pressure and external response. “I wanted [Less Is Morbid] to at least go lateral, but definitely not to go south” in terms of his own high-water mark and audience reception, Jafa acknowledged. One of his first-ever curatorial commissions brought together works by Robert Mapplethorpe at the behest of Barbara Gladstone in 2021. “I felt very seen by Barbara,” he shared regarding his autonomy to pull photographs at will, but at the exhibition opening, he was approached by guests who were “curious about [his] thinking.” Jafa replied that there was no thinking. The thinking was absent and that was as deep as it went. Jafa was leaving the onus of interpretation up to the audience, then and now, knowing that any further explanation could restrict one’s ultimate relationship to the work.
The conversational zig-zag brought Lax back to Less Is Morbid and what Jafa hoped for as more and more visitors flock to MoMA. In a composed state, Jafa revealed he was interested in “what can be seen and [also] hard to access.” Jafa was reminding the audience of the purest way to experience art, returning to the ultimate inquiry: how does it make you feel?
Arthur Jafa — Less Is Morbid is open now at The Museum of Modern Art through July 5, 2026. 11 W 53rd Street, NY, NY
Cover Image by PROTOChic featuring David Hammons ‘Untitled,’ 2010