A Fondazione Prada Exhibition Pairs Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince
What is appropriate to appropriate? That question is the one that animates practices of Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa, who are currently showing their work together at the Fondazione Prada in Venice. At first glance, the pairing might seem like an unconventional one, even though both artists are well known for appropriating others’ images. “I’m surprised that people are surprised,” Jafa told me in a video interview ahead of the exhibition. “I think it’s pretty apparent that a large part of what I do, at least inside the art world, just wouldn’t be possible without Richard’s precedent.” Related Articles “They are both absolutely scavengers for and collectors of images from every possible source,” Nancy Spector, the exhibition’s curator, said in a recent interview. Jafa and Prince met during the debut exhibition of Jafa’s AGHDRA (2021), a video of an ocean made of digital rocks that premiered that year at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Harlem. Jafa thought Prince might just come to watch about 10–15 minutes, but Prince stayed in the gallery for the …
