Jibade-Khalil Huffman - November, 2019
“Surf Point was a game changer for me in terms of time and space to finish a long in the works piece as well and refocus moving forward. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity.”
Jibade-Khalil Huffman’s practice encompasses writing, image making and where these two meet somewhere in the middle. In 2008, he published his first book, "19 Names For Our Band,” and has continued working in this fashion--making books of poems, up to and including the more recent, “Sleeper Hold” (2015). Currently he is working on a book of essays (about hip-hop, cinema and art to be published in 2020) that double as, or veer into, poetry. His visual practice spans photography, video and sculpture. More recently, he has been making multi-layered light boxes. These works distill many of his interests: layering, the juxtaposition of text and image and the sculptural use of images.
He is also very interested in appropriation and making work that is reflective of image overload and generative in its own use of medium and message. Finally, all or much of the above intersects in installation, performance and interventions combining site, text and experience. In performance, as in his videos, he typically works with performers though occasionally uses his own body in various investigations of African-American masculinity. While his performances typically make use of a singular voice, performing a text, addressing an audience, the installations utilize multiple projections and overlapping soundtracks that surround viewers to suggest a complicity in this spectatorship.
More of his work can be seen at anatebgi.com/cpt_artists/jibade-khalil-huffman.