Zora J Murff makes photographs, assemblages, videos, and text works that examine physical, psychic, and political violence, the rhythms and resonances of oppression throughout history and into the present, and the harmful desires that our visual culture cultivates. Zora J Murff is particularly attentive to the structures of state violence. His exhibition for MASS MoCA invites viewers to examine how systems of domination interlock and how their injurious effects are normalized and made invisible in everyday life. Zora J Murff’s photographs alternately capture poignant portraits, shots of playful light, the movement of cities, or signs of quiet life despite the odds. His collages combine text and images from a myriad of sources. For Zora J Murff, no issue is a single issue when the havoc created abroad is paid for, dearly, at home.

In RACE/HUSTLE, Zora J Murff shows, through photographs, collages, and, for the first time, installation works, that the pursuit of liberation is, in part, a struggle against a desire for what merely looks like liberation. The Perfect Slave (after Jared Sexton) (2022) is a glitchy image of President Barack Obama’s official headshot that makes him look like a masked bandit. In Gas Money (Affirmation #1) (2019), Andrew Jackson peeks out from a folded $20 bill being passed from one Black hand to another. One of two participatory works, Master’s Tools/Master’s House (Exclusion and Extraction) (2025), bluntly signifies how the art museum itself is part of the cultural arm of white supremacy and state power. RACE/HUSTLE reminds us that race, capital, and imperialism structure much of our relationships to one another and ourselves. At the same time, they are not absolutely powerful. What does it take to resist? What does it take to desire to resist?

About the Artist:
Zora J Murff (b. 1987) is an Oregon-based artist and educator interested in liberation from anti-Blackness. He uses his creative practice to explore the politics of racialization using provocative imagery and practices photography expansively, stretching it across disciplines to create associative or implied images. He strives to speak plainly about visual culture and its entanglement with race, capitalism, and other forms of hierarchical oppression.

EXHIBITION TEXTS

Download a PDF of the exhibition gallery guide here.

Curated by Terence Washington, Curatorial Exchange Initiative Fellow, MASS MoCA.

RACE/HUSTLE is part of MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI) which is generously supported through a leadership gift from Sarah Arison and the Arison Arts Foundation, Michi Jigarjian, Denise Sobel, the Teiger Foundation, and Anders Schroeder. Additional support is provided by the Director’s Catalyst Fund, with generous contributions from Greg and Anne Avis, Kelly and Bill Kaiser, Steve and Lisa Jenks, Bob Gold, and an anonymous donor.

Zora J Murff, Gas Money (Affirmation #1), 2019
Archival pigment print
60 x 75 inches
3 + 1 AP