What Is My Work About?
My work is about narrative. My work is about undermining narrative through various forms of text with poetry. My work is about Selma, Alabama. My work is about movies. My work is about serial imagery. My work is about suburbia. My work is set in the big city. My work stars Pearl Cleage, as herself. My work stars Paul Giamati as himself. My work is about dirty jokes. My work features a number of notable cameos. My work is “insufferable, from the very start.” My work is about the Venus Hottentot. My work is about “babies having babies.” My work is about “Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys” in both tenor and in form. My work is about layers and might be best described as the repeated attempt to replicate the depth of Aretha Franklin’s mezzo soprano. My work is about abstraction. My work is non-narrative non-fiction. My work is about collapse and litany and drugs and gambling.
Artist Statement
My work is concerned with the written (I published my first book in 2008 and continue to participate in the poetry community—writing books, giving readings and the like), the visual (this includes photography and video), and where these meet in between. This unnamable, third place (which includes performance, installation and web-based interventions) is unified in terms of the application of new forms within forms that already exist.
The subtitle, as utilized in my photographic slideshows and videos, for example, is a device not only for conveying poetic information (couplets that look like subtitles that become a poem) but also “translating” visual information (in this instance, abstractions made up of layers of projected images). In the case of the karaoke poems (love poems written to fit into karaoke form), there is an adherence to the format of karaoke only insofar as this, the scrolling text, allows the poems to take shape. The speed of the scroll, at once natural and circumspect, becomes another way of thinking about breath in the scheme of the poem, while the form itself serves as a corrective to conventions that might otherwise limit our reading of the text.
CV
(Born Detroit, 1981)
(Lives and Works in Los Angeles, CA)
Education
2013 MFA, Roski School of Fine Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
2005 MFA, Graduate Program in Literary Arts, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
2003 BA, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Selected Exhibitions/Screenings/Performances
Solo/Two-Person:
2015
Anthony Pearson and Jibade-Khalil Huffman: Third Person, Marianne Boesky East, New York, New York
2013
The Four People You Meet At Every Drug Deal, Samuel Freeman Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Lake Overturn, Pacific Standard Time Presents: The Machine Project Field Guide to L.A. Architecture, The Santa Monica Screening Room, Santa Monica, California
Niagara, USC Roski Gallery, Los Angeles, California
A Novella and Stories, Machine Project, Los Angeles, California
2012
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley: A Reading, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, California
We Don’t Believe You, You Need More People (with Martine Syms), Public Fiction, Los Angeles, California
Cameron Crawford and Jibade-Khalil Huffman: Double Jointed, curated by Megha Ratapali, Scaramouche, New York, New York
2011
Teen Wolf/Teen Wolf Too, Mt. Tremper Arts, Mt. Tremper, New York
NOWHERE, The Home Of, Brooklyn, New York (with Eliza Newman-Saul)
Slow Reveal, or, Negro Twist Ending Where You Are Really A Negro, The Tank, New York, New York
2010
Monster Island Czar, MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, New York
2008
Xaviera Simmons and Jibade-Khalil Huffman: Oscillations (For A Minute There I Lost Myself), Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York
2003
You Just Have To Go Down A Flight of Stairs, Woods Gallery, Bard College, Annandale- on-Hudson, NY
Group:
2015
Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed, Ritter Art Gallery, Florida Atlantic University,Boca Raton, Florida
2014
Made in L.A. 2014, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California
Step and Repeat, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California
Rhetoric, Aran Cravey, Los Angeles, California
Rockaway!, MoMA/P.S.1/Rockaway Surf Club, New York, New York
The Machine Project Guide to the Gamble House, Pasadena, California
2013
The Reanimation Library, Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, California
The Stand In, Public Fiction, Los Angeles, California
2012
New Wight Biennial 2012, UCLA New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California
Act 2: The Props, Public Fiction, Los Angeles, California
2011
Pixelating: Black in New Dimensions, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art,Brooklyn, New York
Le Mots et Les Choses (Words and Things): An Evening With Future Plan and Program, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, California
So Much I Want to Say: Future Plan and Program, Houston Museum of African-American Culture, Houston, Texas
The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Vol. 2, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, New York
2010
I Forgot My Mantra, Brooklyn Fireproof, Brooklyn, New York
Manual Transmission, Bush Gardens Rooftop, Brooklyn, New York
2009
Wrong: A Program of Text and Image, Eighth Veil, Los Angeles, California (curator)
2007
Game Bird Sampler, White Box Annex, New York, New York
Selected Publications
Books:
2014
Sleeper Hold, Fence Books
2011
James Brown Is Dead, Future Plan and Program
2009
After Stanley Donen, Eighth Veil (editor)
2008
19 Names For Our Band, Fence Books
Journals, Magazines, Chapbooks and Anthologies:
2014
Baumtest, “Untitled (Thriller),” “Diet Needles,” (photographs)
2013
The & Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing Vol. 2, Lake Forrest College Press
from “Niagara”
2012
Everyday Genius, “Now That I Can Dance”
Night Papers, “Poem for Cedric the Entertainer”
2011
Exit Music (with Cynthia Gray), Collective Experience/Writing Machine
(photographs)
The Collector’s Guide To Emerging Art Photography, Vol. 2, Humble Arts Foundation
“Untitled #1 (from ‘Nowhere’),” “Untitled #2 (from ‘Nowhere’)” (photographs)
2010
Line: A Journal, from “Pictures of Color
Disco Prairie Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Factory Hollow Press
from “Funeral, Mineral, Vegetable”
Poetry Society of America, “What’s American About American Poetry?”
2009
The L Magazine, “Thank You For Your Payment to the City of New York”
A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, Fence Books
“Framework,” “In an Uncurling Game” “’The whole cast of them in hands passing…”
2008
Tantalum, “How I Know I’m Here”
Canarium, “James Brown is Dead”
2007
Aufgabe, “Poem”
6×6, “Very Early in the Life of Jerome (i-vi)”
Court Green, “Where Are the Negroes in Hartford, Connecticut?,” “When delivering makeup…,” “The Blowjob Pictures”
Bat City Review, “Fugue,” “Prayer”
The Bedazzler, “If we believe theory,” “In An Uncurling Game,” “”Those turned quiet by knives, by night…,” “Very Early in the Life of Jerome (vii),” “”You just have to go down a flight of stairs…”
2006
Bat City Review, “Funeral, Mineral, Vegetable”
Encyclopedia, “Untitled #3,” “Untitled #9,” “Untitled #15,” “Untitled #26”
from the series “The Living Arrangements” (photographs)
2005
FO A RM, “Wilderness Literature”
NOON, “A Paramour”
2004
The New Orleans Review, “You just have to go down a flight of stairs…”
Boston Review, “Anyone can purchase flags ….,” “Sonnet,” “Oftener, golden rule; nude ….,” “Palimpsest,” “Diamond Zones”
2003
(Some From) DIAGRAM: A Print Anthology, New Michigan Press, Ander Monson, editor, “Who Are These People With Their Ugly Children”
NOON, “Today Is My Birthday,” “I Can’t Stand the Summer Nights”
Selected Awards
2014
Emerging Artist Fellowship, California Community Foundation
2010-2011
Artist-in-Residence, Workspace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, New York
2010
Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant
2009
Jerome Foundation Fellowship/Residency, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Red Wing, Minnesota
2008
Residency, Ucross Foundation for the Arts, Clearmont, Wyoming
2007
Residency, Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, New York
2004
Grolier Poetry Prize
2001
Photography Advisory Board Scholarship, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
Selected Bibliography
2014
Vogel, Wendy, “25 Artists to Watch,” Modern Painters, December
Guthery, Summer, “Made in LA,” Frieze Magazine, November
Cuthbert, Robert, “Best Up-And-Coming Visual Artists in Los Angeles,” CBS Los Angeles, Apr. 14
2013
Wolf, Kate, “Drug Dealing With Jibade-Khalil Huffman,” NY Arts Magazine, Nov. 5
Donoghue, Katie, “Material Obsession at Untitled,” Whitewall, Dec. 4
Berardini, Andrew. “Fall Preview: New Skin for an Old Ceremony,” Artslant, Sept. 10
Darling, Nikki, “The Ephemeral Texts of Jibade-Khalil Huffman,” KCET Artbound, Sept. 6
Torres, Jesus Manuel Rojas, “The Four People You Meet At Every Drug Deal by Jibade-Khalil Huffman,” What’s Up Miami: An Online Journal of the Arts
2012
Tuck, Geoff, “The End of the New World (and) Sculpture for Jeffrey Tambor,” Notes on Looking
Laluyan, Oscar A., “Crawford & Huffman: Double Express-O,” Arte Fuse
2011
Leopold, Rebecca, “Explosive Fragments: Poems and Photographs,” PBS Art:21 Blog
2009
Berardini, Andrew, “Word Problems,” review of “Wrong: A Program of Text and Image,” ArtSlant
Price, Brett, review of “19 Names For Our Band,” The Octopus Magazine
2008
“Honor Roll,” Spin Magazine
2006
Devun, Leah, Review of Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, Art Lies