Stink Signs Filmmaker and Artist Arthur Jafa

Arthur Jafa has signed with Stink Films for global representation.

Widely regarded as one of the world’s most influential artists working in video, Jafa is an artist who “has been honing his contribution to black culture for decades.” 

This has been reflected in multiple publications, exhibitions, and a place on Art Reviews’ prestigious top 100 Power list.

Jafa is perhaps best known for, Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (2016), a seven-minute video set to Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam.” This critically-acclaimed exploration of Af-rican-American identity screened across the world, in galleries including Gavin Brown’s Enter-prise in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA) and the Serpentine in London, but to name a few. In 2017, along with TNEG–––the motion picture studio he co-founded. Jafa also conceived, shot and edited the music video for JAY-Z’s 4:44, the title track from his newest album.

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi and educated at Howard University, Jafa first rose to prominence for lensing Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash’s seminal film that earned Jafa a “Best Cinematography” award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. Jafa’s Dreams Are Colder Than Death, an experimental documentary exploring black identity in America, was an official selec-tion at the 2014 New York Film Festival.

Says Executive Producer Melinda Nugent, “I vividly recall meeting AJ for the first time, sitting together in a Paris café reviewing one of his iconic binders of collected images... I knew instantly my world had changed. I have been honored to support the incredibly influential, important work of this multi-hyphenate artist and thinker for over twenty years. Coming off of the success of his Love is The Message exhibition, I am thrilled to bring this collaboration home to Stink's family of ground-breaking creative artists.”

Jafa’s most recent exhibition, A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions, premiered last June at the Serpentine Galleries in London, and is currently on view at the Julia Sto-schek Collection in Berlin through November, 2018. 

One of the most highly awarded production companies in the world, Stink Films is home to a diverse roster of talent that includes Nicolas Winding Refn, Joachim Back, Eliot Rausch, and Salomon Ligthelm.