Opening in sync with the world’s most closely watched art event, a major exhibition is set to unfold in Venice as part of the Venice Art Biennale 2026. Titled Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince, the project brings two influential American artists into a rare and charged conversation.
From May 9th to November 23, 2026, the exhibition will be presented at Fondazione Prada’s Venice venue, positioning itself as a significant parallel project during the Biennale season.
Arthur Jafa at Fondazione Prada, Venice
Curated by Nancy Spector, the exhibition is conceived as a visual dialogue rather than a traditional two-person show. Works by Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince are placed in deliberate proximity, allowing their practices to collide, overlap, and refract one another. The project explores how images circulate, accumulate meaning, and shape identity within American culture.
Both artists are known for treating imagery with a sense of productive disobedience—sampling, reworking, and recontextualizing visual material drawn from cinema, music, advertising, literature, social media, and popular mythology. In Helter Skelter, this shared attitude becomes the foundation for an exhibition that examines America’s visual language from two distinct but interconnected positions.
Arthur Jafa: rewriting the language of Black visual culture
Arthur Jafa’s works in the exhibition extend his ongoing investigation into Black experience, emotion, and memory. Drawing from found footage, music, and cinematic structures, his projects seek to intensify the emotional charge of images while challenging how Black life has historically been represented. His practice moves between film, installation, and assemblage, often creating works that feel both intimate and monumental.
Richard Prince: appropriation and the American psyche
Richard Prince contributes works that reflect his long-standing engagement with appropriation and authorship. Known for reworking imagery tied to advertising, celebrity culture, and masculine archetypes, Prince’s projects in Helter Skelter probe the uneasy space between critique and fascination. His works examine how desire, power, and mythology circulate within American popular culture.
Beyond Venice Art Biennale 2026
The connection between Helter Skelter and Venice Art Biennale 2026 runs deeper than timing. Both artists have previously participated in the Biennale’s main exhibition, with Arthur Jafa receiving the prestigious Golden Lion in 2019. Presenting this project during the Biennale situates the exhibition within a broader international discourse on image-making, identity, and power.
Running throughout the Biennale period, the exhibition stands as one of the most intellectually charged artistic encounters in Venice in 2026.
