What counts as fair use when you’re borrowing from others’ work? This question haunts Richard Prince and Arthur Jafa’s latest exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Venice. Both artists have long been masters of taking, transforming, and paying homage to existing images.

Their friendship, sparked by a chance encounter at a New York gallery in 2021, has since blossomed into a collaboration that explores shared interests: outsider culture, working-class rebellion, and the often blurry line between art and everyday life. For Jafa, Prince’s work is a “black as night” nod to his practice.

Prince himself reflects on the artist’s quest for ‘self-authorizing’ in an interview excerpted from the exhibition catalogue: ‘Artists are always faced with—especially if you’re an idea-oriented artist—the question of where the line [in the sand] is. You can step back and draw another.’ Jafa and Prince now share a zine, born out of their ongoing exchange of ideas and images.

This Venice show invites visitors to ponder: when does inspiration turn into appropriation? For Jafa and Prince, it’s less about drawing lines than crossing them, with an eye on the cultural and ephemeral. In this dance of borrowing and creation, perhaps we too find our own boundaries—or choose to blur them.