Arthur Jafa’s Vital New Museum Survey Is a Horror Show for the Ages

In a self-portrait from 1988, Arthur Jafa holds his camera to a mirror and stares upward, meeting both his own reflected face and the gaze of his viewer simultaneously. When it was first published in Artforum, the photograph was called Self-Portrait. But at some point, Jafa changed it to Monster, the title it holds today.The renaming of Monster is, I think, a telling gesture, especially because Jafa’s films and videos are filled with terrifying creatures. Some are human, some are not, and