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With two upcoming shows, one at Gladstone Gallery and another at 52 Walker, Jafa reflects on what it means to get a big break as an artist.

In several frames of the artist Arthur Jafa’s seminal 2016 video collage of Black America, “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death,” a felled bullrider scoops himself off the dirt.

McClellan reveals, as Jafa does to more tragic effect, that even the quickest glimpses of a subculture can turn into spectacle.

Jafa’s practice has embraced film and video, sculpture, installation, and even painting.

That never felt right to Jafa.