Zora J Murff: The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight
Friday, February 7 - extended through Sunday, April 20
”’The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight’ is a deeply unsettling yet necessary exhibition. Murff compels his audience to do more than observe; he insists that they engage, interrogate, and, ultimately, refuse complacency. By weaving together history, media, and the language of visual culture, he makes clear that the forces driving racial violence are not abstract or distant. Instead, they are embedded in the everyday, hiding in plain sight.”
- Amy Wei for Musée Magazine
ZORA J MURFF, for I prefer to die with my head held high (do not weep for me, but fight in my stead), 2024
80 x 64 inches | 203.2 x 162.56 cm.
Mixed media collage
Unique
NFS
ZORA J MURFF, Nigga drawing the American Genre (after Howardena
Pindell), 2021
Textbook page, tape, postage stamp, and ink
20 x 16 inches | 50.8 x 40.64 cm.
Unique
Installation view
ZORA J MURFF, The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), 2024 (detail)
From a set of four framed mixed medial collages
11 x 14 inches each | 27.94 x 35.56 cm.
Unique
NFS
Installation view
ZORA J MURFF, The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight, 2024 (detail)
Set of three framed mixed media collages
20 x 25 inches each | 50.8 x 63.5 cm. each
Unique
NFS
ZORA J MURFF, Woah Nigga, Die Slow Nigga (Cooning), 2022
Mixed media collage
39 1/2 x 28 inches | 100.33 x 71.12 cm.
Unique
ZORA J MURFF, I Woke Up Today Wanting To Kill Me A White Man (N.H.I.), 2022
Archival pigment print
20 x 30 inches | 50.8 x 76.2 cm,
Edition of 3
ZORA J MURFF, A Study in Black and white: Cindy Sherman Did Blackface (after Cindy Sherman), 2021
Mixed media collage
20 x 16 inches | 50.8 x 40.64 cm.
Unique
Installation view
ZORA J MURFF, The Selling of the Delectable Negro (1954/2014), 2024
Mixed media collage
10 x 8 inches | 25.4 x 20.32 cm.
Unique
ZORA J MURFF, Gameday in Fayetteville (A Night in the Garden), 2023 (work in progress)
Size TBD
Mixed media collage
Unique
ZORA J MURFF: The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight
The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight uses multiple image-making methods and the process of enlightened witnessing (hooks, 1997)1* to investigate how the original sins of Western imperialism extend into our present reality. The project makes visual links between global anti-Black genocide; American political, physical, and psychic oppression; and how various state powers use modes of violence to snuff out articulations of Black power.
The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight began when I recently had a vivid experience of racial time. I was listening to a podcast, “The Ghost in Your Phone.” The episode, “explore[s] the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s tragic role in the formation and development of the world economy,” through its historic and contemporary exploitation of resources by Western powers (Throughline NPR, 2023.)2* As I was learning about how the cobalt that powers my cell phone begins its journey through slave labor in the D.R.C., I was simultaneously navigating a convoluted online system for sending an incarcerated loved one money. In that moment, I could clearly see the anti-Black paradigm and how it was being mitigated through technology. I was filled with the desire to make work capable of revealing this dynamic at different levels: between the individual, our communities, and the larger systems we find ourselves ensnared in.
The works connect global histories of state violence, unpacking: the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba by the Belgian government and CIA; the murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark at the hands of the Chicago Police Department and FBI; the bombing of the MOVE organization carried out by the Philadelphia Police Department; the mining of conflict materials and continued projects of western imperialism in Africa; and the parallels of militarized genocide and the proliferation of technology. The exhibition is unified by the concepts of compliance, conformity, and complicity; the laundering of Black Rage (Too Black, 2024); and the reproduction and consumption of violent imagery.
The purpose of The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight is to be an educational tool for combating the inertia of Western imperialism. Specifically, I’m seeking to address the general apathy people feel and enact towards anti-Black oppression that is the result of misinformation and miseducation.
1* The process of being critically vigilant about representations of race, gender, and class in: the visual and material culture we consume; the processes of how it was created; and the individuals and the systems that created it.
2* Bell hooks, “Cultural Criticism and Transformation,” 1997
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz8TanXEgQ0
3* Rund Abdelfatah and Ramtin Arabloui, “The Ghost in Your Phone,” Throughline, NPR, 2023.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/31/1179117816/the-ghost-in-your-phone