Through diverse modes that include, performance, video, photography, and writing, Jibade-Khalil Huffman uses language, text, and image as a way to tell stories and convey meaning. The artist resists the distillation of his work down to one or two themes, but claims that his work often contains humor and contradiction in order to accurately emulate life’s complexities. Huffman achieves this through an experimentation with and the layering of materials, often projecting continuously looped video onto semi-transparent photographic collage and sculptural elements.

Jibade-Khalil Huffman is an artist and the author of three books of poems, “19 Names For Our Band (Fence, 2008), “James Brown is Dead (Future Plan and Program, 2011), and “Sleeper Hold” (Fence, 2015). His recent exhibitions include the Hammer Museum (2014), MOCA Detroit (2017), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2017), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (2015), Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia (2017), The Studio Museum in Harlem (2016), and Swiss Institute (2016). Educated at Bard College (BA), Brown University (MFA, Literary Arts), and USC (MFA, Studio Art), his awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize, the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant, and fellowships from the Lighthouse Works, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Huffman was a 2015-16 Artist in Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and lives and works in New York.