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. Murff is particularly attentive to the structures of state violence. His project 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. 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.

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.

About the Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI):
Zora J Murff: RACE/HUSTLE, curated by Terence Washington, is part of MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (CEI), an exploratory pilot for how contemporary museums work collaboratively with curators and artists, whose diverse practices and knowledge can be exchanged, supported, and deepened. CEI invites six fellows, including independent and institutionally-based curators working in the United States and Puerto Rico, to realize curatorial projects at MASS MoCA the first of which, Steve Locke: the fire next time, opened in 2024. As part of the program, CEI fellows receive the support of MASS MoCA’s curators, art fabrication and public programs teams, and with other key staff to realize exhibitions that will be mounted at, and supported through, MASS MoCA over the next five years. Among the defining features of the fellowship is its emphasis on curatorial exchange — intellectual, experiential, cultural, interpersonal, and institutional. MASS MoCA provides direct support for research, travel, residency, and commission/studio time for the artists each fellow is working with, and an annual stipend for the fellows that spans a two to three year period. The six fellows are Ryan N. Dennis, Marissa Del Toro, Evan Garza, Michy Marxuach, Risa Puleo, and Terence Washington.

Terence Washington is a writer and curator living in Philadelphia and studying at Princeton University. He completed his master’s degree in art history at Williams College before working with the National Gallery of Art, the NXTHVN residency, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Free Library of Philadelphia.

MASS MoCA’s Curatorial Exchange Initiative (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.