Helter Skelter Review: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince at Fondazione Prada

At the Venice Biennale, the Fondazione Prada presents "Helter Skelter," a two-person exhibition pairing Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, curated by Nancy Spector. The show is widely considered the real US pavilion, contrasting with the official one in the Giardini. Both artists use appropriation to address American violence and beauty. However, the review criticizes Spector for avoiding the racial implications of her curatorial conceit, which segregates Prince as representing white America and Jafa as representing Black America, ignoring how their practices reveal the mutual haunting of Blackness and whiteness. The opening pairing of Prince's "Folk Songs" (2006) and Jafa's "Big Wheel II" (2018) evokes lynching and Black labor, a reading Spector fails to acknowledge.