Zora J Murff – At no point in between @Webber Gallery

One week before its closure, and in the light of the talk between Zora J Murff and Ekow Eshun, we are highlighting the exhibition “At No Point In Between”, on show at Webber Gallery in London until February 25.
 
The discussion with writer, curator and broadcaster Ekow Eshun and artist Zora J Murff takes place Thursday 17th February | 18:30 GMT.

Aperture has published Murff’s book ‘True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis)’ to wide critical acclaim in the end of 2021. The book is a chronicle of survival. Murff constructs a manual for coming to terms with the historical and contemporary realities of America’s divisive structures of privilege and caste.
 
Weaving the realities of being both participant and archiver, Zora J Murff’s practice is rooted in the social commentary of white supremacy and its impact on the lives of Black people in America, including his own.
 
Using previous experiences in psychology and social work, alongside a nuanced visual language combining archives, portraiture, and autobiographical accounts, Murff confronts America’s uncomfortable relationship with power, privilege, violence, and race and examines
the complicity of the individual and the image in creating and maintaining racial hierarchy.
 
Questioning racial and cultural constructs, the exhibition visualizes the individuals and social
environment of the historic Black neighbourhood of North Omaha, Nebraska; a place profoundly determined by systemic racism and abhorrent crimes including the lynching of Will Brown in 1919, the assassination of Vivian Strong in 1969 and recent videos of police violence disseminated via social media.
 
Murff states “My early images were made when I was experiencing rapid upward social mobility and becoming acquainted with Arkansas and Mississippi, my ancestral landscapes. Visiting the birthplaces of my maternal and paternal families forced me to reflect on how we build identity, how identity can be created for us, and how those phenomena collide.”

Zora J Murff (born in Des Moines, Iowa, 1987) is an artist and educator living in Fayetteville Arkansas. He was one of eight artists chosen for the most recent iteration of the Museum of Modern Art’s New Photography series, Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020. His work was also presented at the 2021 Recontres d’Arles, France, as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award. Murff’s previous books include Corrections (2015); LOST, Omaha (Kris Graves Projects, 2018); and At No Point In Between (Dais Books, 2019). He is represented by Webber Gallery (London).
 
Ekow Eshun is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing the most prestigious public art programme in the UK, and the former Director of the ICA, London. He is the author of Africa State of Mind, nominated for the Lucie Photo Book Prize, and Black Gold of the Sun, nominated for the Orwell prize. He has contributed to monographs and publications on artists including Mark Bradford, Chris Ofili, Kehinde Wiley, John Akomfrah and Wangechi Mutu as well as to books including Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography, Between Worlds: Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850, and Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, Granta, Esquire, GQ Style, Aperture, Wired and L’uomo Vogue. He is a Contributing Editor at Wallpaper magazine and is a member of the Advisory Board of Liquid Blackness journal. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University.