Arthur Jafa is one of America’s most important living artists, and his biggest-ever show is currently on view. I Am Tony, at the New Museum in Lower Manhattan, is spread across two floors and touches on a wide range of subjects — Black music, religion, American cinema, political violence, popular culture, and the Internet, all at once. The exhibition is crowded, and for the most part it succeeds.
The Two Big Pieces
The centerpiece of the show is “Allegiance” (2026), a wall-to-wall black-and-white image of 19th-century Black schoolchildren doing a “Sieg Heil” salute. The floor opens onto this aptly titled piece, which has a grainy, spectral quality and produces a melancholic effect from the somber subjects clustered in the frame.
The wall text explains that this salute was once a customary, patriotic way of honoring the flag. It is what that same gesture came to mean in a 20th-century European context that gives the work its power — shock, contrast, and new associations that become clear out of context.
The other major work is “Rwanda, 1999” (2026), a photo Jafa took at the Murambi Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, five years after the atrocity it observes. The bloodied garments of the mass killing’s victims are strewn across the entire museum wall.
The wall text never explicitly names Palestine, yet one cannot help but see the genocide in Gaza while looking at this work, and one imagines Jafa’s evocation was deliberate.
The Survey’s Scope
Jafa’s survey is full of the artist’s characteristic gallows humor that ironizes even the most morbid images and brings to the surface the solemnity of low culture. The exhibition’s ambitions seem to be to engage in the same themes Jafa has continually mined, this time in even more idiosyncratic and brash ways.
The survey elevates assemblage and collage. Jafa’s references are wide-ranging, and his instinctive handling of memes and virality marks him out from other artists. The show is packed with ideas and reaches for big themes — the same subjects Jafa has returned to time and again — but this time presented in stranger and more forceful terms.
Our Take
The show is uneven, and it does not always achieve what it sets out to do. But the big pieces land. “Allegiance” is a wall-to-wall image of 19th-century Black schoolchildren doing a “Sieg Heil” salute — a piece of gallows humor that brings the solemnity of low culture to the surface. “Rwanda, 1999” is a photo of bloodied garments at a genocide memorial, and it makes you think of Gaza even though the wall text does not mention Palestine.
The show is packed, and it mostly works.
| Work | Theme | Key Detail |
|---|---|---|
| “Allegiance” (2026) | American history and the shock of context | 19th-century Black schoolchildren doing a “Sieg Heil” salute |
| “Rwanda, 1999” (2026) | Mass violence and recent conflict | Bloodied garments at the Murambi memorial |
Here’s how the show’s two main works rank in importance to the survey:
- “Allegiance” — the wall-to-wall salute that opens the floor and sets the somber tone.
- “Rwanda, 1999” — the photo of bloodied garments that evokes Gaza even though the wall text never names Palestine.
Source material: “Arthur Jafa, King of Pop,” Hyperallergic.
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