Jordan Strafer’s True Stories
“I’m not interested in finding the truth,” says artist Jordan Strafer, “I’m trying to find the spaces around truth.” An improbable combination of surrealist humor, cultural homage, and critical engagement, Strafer’s video artworks are deeply researched and elaborately art-directed reenactments of personal experiences and historical events. Drawing on all corners of American culture, from the 1991 televised rape trial of William Kennedy Smith to pop cultural touchstones like The Oprah Winfrey Show, Strafer often examines the performance of justice in the United States. The child of Miami criminal defense attorneys, Strafer dramatizes trials and the particularities of language used by lawyers, defendants, and witnesses, evoking how the theatricality of the American legal system shapes and distorts our collective sense of justice. Capturing the artist and her cast and crew on the set of her latest video work—TALK SHOW (2026), which premiered at the 2026 Whitney Biennial—this short documentary traces the development of Strafer’s idiosyncratic sensibility, following the artist on deep dives into 1980s “Inner Child” pop psychology and 1990s erotic thriller aesthetics. Underneath the videos’ humor and absurdity, Strafer’s storytelling style is quietly driven by her desire to complicate the morality at the heart of the cultural moments she portrays.
Credits
Director & Producer: Andrea Yu-Chieh Chung. Executive Producer: Tina Kukielski. Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Editor: Michelle Chang. Cinematography: HaiTao Wu. Additional Cinematography: Sean Hanley. Sound: Simon Guzman. Associate Curator: Jurrell Lewis.
Color Correction: Cody L Sandberg. Sound Design & Mix: Collin Blendell. Design & Graphics: Chips. Music: Epidemic Sound. Assistant Editor: Stephanie Cen.
Artwork Courtesy: Jordan Strafer, Heidi Gallery. Archival Media: Buyout Footage, Getty Images. Additional Material: ABC News, Harpo Studios, CNN.
Clearance Counsel: Donaldson Callif Perez, Chris Perez, Victoria Rosales.
Thanks: TALK SHOW Cast and Crew, Whitney Museum of American Art.
New York Close Up is made possible with support from Scott Power and Channing Dungey, the Every Page Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the Henry Nias Foundation.
© 2026 Art21, Inc.
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Jordan Strafer was born in 1990 in Miami, Florida, and currently lives and works between New York City and Athens, Greece. She received her BA from The New School and a BFA from Parsons in 2016, later receiving an MFA from Bard College, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 2019. Strafer’s surreal videos draw on personal experience and historical fact, using the reenactment of real events as a foundation for allegorical stories about American popular culture, politics, and justice. In her videos, the artist stitches together texts from court testimonies, psychoanalytic theory, and interviews, with the aesthetics of daytime talk shows, soap operas, and erotic thrillers. Working with prosthetics, puppets, and actors on ambitious film sets, Strafer works collaboratively with makeup artists, film crews, set and costume designers, and others to create these immersive worlds. Through her aestheticized and referential works, the artist exposes the interconnected systems of power and representation that shape our sense of truth and morality.
“I always think of the reenactment as a vessel that can hold all of the ideas that I’m having in the moment.”
Jordan Strafer