Jibade-Khalil Huffman was born in 1981 in Detroit, Michigan. He received a BA from Bard College, a MFA in literary arts from Brown University and an MFA in studio art from the University of Southern California.

Past exhibitions of his work have been held at: Ballroom Marfa; MOCA Cleveland; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; MOCA Tucson; MOCA Detroit; MOCA, Los Angeles; the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art; the Jewish Museum in New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Kitchen in New York; and the Swiss Institute in New York. 

A large portion of Huffman’s practice occurs at the intersection of writing, poetry, found media and common speech. His work often cuts, samples and shifts bits of video and excerpts of text into new formats. Central to his practice is the idea of erasure, especially of certain voices, people and ideas. Huffman builds up and removes layers of material in videos and two-dimensional collages made from an endless array of TV Guides, abstracted maps, classic television stills, icons of technology, charts, diagrams, staircases, tunnels, markers, arrows, annotations and advertisements. His finished collages often leave only stray and fleeting fragments of a phrase for his audience to parse.

Huffman’s awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize, the Jerome Foundation Travel Grant and fellowships from Bemis Center, the Lighthouse Works, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Huffman is the author of Sleeper Hold (2015), James Brown Is Dead and Other Poems (2011), and 19 Names for Our Band (2008). Huffman was a 2015–2016 Artist in Residence at the Studio Museum.

Huffman lives and works in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Los Angeles, California.