Venice, works by contemporary American artists Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince at the Fondazione Prada

Fondazione Prada, at its Venetian venue Ca’ Corner della Regina, presents the exhibition Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, curated by Nancy Spector, from May 9 to November 23, 2026. The exhibition brings into dialogue, for the first time in a systematic way, the works of two of the most influential contemporary American artists, Arthur Jafa (1960) and Richard Prince (1949). Separated by a generation, the two share a highly radical approach based on the appropriation and reworking of images from film, pulp fiction, comic books, YouTube videos, science fiction, record covers, rock band posters, first editions of Beat Generation volumes, news, celebrity memorabilia, and social media content. Both draw on American popular culture, unmasking its contradictions and ambiguities while revealing its symbolic and seductive power.

Their researches delineate cultural maps of the United States: Jafa investigates his own African American identity, aiming to reinforce and redefine the language of Black art and cinema, while Prince moves between an edgy critique of white masculinity and a fascination with the darker aspects of the American imagination.

The exhibition brings together more than fifty works including photographs, videos, installations, sculptures and paintings, including previously unseen works and a zine made jointly by the two artists. The latter collects the images they exchanged during the preparation of the exhibition, offering a direct look at their creative process.

The exhibition itinerary unfolds between the ground and second floors of the Venetian palace, articulating itself through thematic and conceptual juxtapositions that relate the works to bring out affinities, obsessions and divergences. The result is a reading of U.S. culture in its most vernacular and layered dimension, a reflection of the contexts in which both artists work. “A country forever scarred by its slave past; a country defined by the extraordinary musical traditions rooted in Black culture; a country capable of turning its limitations into strengths; a country of spirituality, prayer and freedom of expression; a country of protests, subcultures, humor and celebrity,” says Nancy Spector.

The title Helter Skelter encompasses a multiplicity of meanings: on the one hand, it recalls a British amusement park attraction and, by extension, a state of disorder and confusion; on the other, it refers to Paul McCartney’s famous 1968 song, included on The Beatles LP, known as The White Album. The term was later reinterpreted by Charles Manson, head of his cult, who appropriated the term to predict an impending apocalyptic racial war in which African Americans and whites would annihilate each other. Moreover, Helter Skelter is also the title of a 1992 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in which African American artists were absent.

Taking up this expression laden with layers and ambiguity, Jafa and Prince turn it into a conceptual ready-made: a title that reflects the complexities, tensions and contradictions of contemporary culture, offering a key to understanding the articulate and provocative nature of the double solo show.

"Both cited Marcel Duchamp’s ready-made, the radical transposition of objects from the real world to the artistic context, as a source of inspiration, or as a reference point for their respective practices,“ the curator explains. ”In that shift from making (making Cubist-style paintings in the early phase of his career) to taking (placing an inverted urinal as part of an exhibition), Duchamp inaugurated a kind of artistic piracy that constitutes the DNA of Jafa’s and Prince’s methodologies, which are distinct but share intriguing similarities. Both are image scavengers. Without asking permission, they plunge into the overflowing reservoir of visual culture - from the swamps of social media to the annals of print journalism, from the mirror gallery of advertising to the Hollywood celluloid archives - to take whatever they want and convert it into art only by their own choice. [...] What emerges through the refracting lenses of Jafa and Prince’s appropriation practices is a relentless denunciation of America. As much in their subjects as in their languages, Jafa and Prince are deeply American artists who incorporate objects and images from the empirical world into their works by converting them as ready-made: Trojan horses, so to speak, designed to destabilize established belief systems."

Pictured: Arthur Jafa, Mickey Mouse was a Scorpio, detail (2017; private collection) © Arthur Jafa / Midnight Robber © Photo: Ian Watts.TV. Richard Prince, Graduation (2018; Collection of Larry Gagosian) © Richard Prince

Venice, works by contemporary American artists Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince at the Fondazione Prada

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.