Zora J Murff makes photographs, assemblages, videos, and text works that examine fast and slow violence, the rhythms and resonances of oppression throughout history and into our present, and the desire we are indoctrinated to cultivate for what ultimately hurts us. He is attentive to the structures of state violence in the U.S. and abroad and how they interlock with the mechanisms that make the effects of systems of domination invisible in everyday life. 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 Murff, no issue is a single issue when the havoc created abroad is paid for, dearly, at home.

Murff gained widespread institutional acclaim with his series At No Point in Between (2019), which captures tragic moments of racial cruelty across time, from the 1919 lynching of Will Brown to redlining Omaha, Nebraska, and recognizes them as symptoms of the same anti-Black violence. In American Mother, American Father, Murff looks at himself, using photographs of loved ones as well as found images to visualize race and what it means to aspire towards upward social mobility; in this series, a set of “affirmations” notes his progress as he refashions himself.

In RACE/HUSTLE, Murff will show, 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. 

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

Zora J Murff: RACE/HUSTLE is part of MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI). The CEI is an exploratory pilot for how contemporary museums work collaboratively with curators and artists, whose diverse practices and knowledge can be exchanged, supported, and deepened. The three-year program invites six curators to realize curatorial projects at MASS MoCA and in the North Adams community. CEI 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, Fronting (Affirmation #4), 2020, Archival pigment print, 48 x 30 inches, Courtesy of the artist.