“Helter Skelter” Can’t Look America in the Eye

Hyperallergic reviews Helter Skelter, a Venice exhibition pairing Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, sponsored by the Fondazione Prada and curated by Nancy Spector, and argues it functions as a more revealing portrait of the United States than the official US pavilion during Venice Biennale opening week. The critic says Spector frames the pairing as Prince depicting (white) America and Jafa depicting Black America, but that this approach avoids directly naming how Blackness and whiteness are intertwined in both artists’ work. The review highlights the show’s opening juxtaposition of Prince’s Folk Songs (2006)—rubber blasting mats stacked and hung from metal stanchions—and Jafa’s Big Wheel II (2018), a monster truck tire wrapped in metal chains, noting that Spector’s labels emphasize car culture and masculinity while the critic reads Prince’s work as also evoking the image of hanging Black bodies. The article contends that the exhibition’s curatorial framing cannot fully confront the racial implications raised by the works’ dialogue.

Read the full article at Hyperallergic