Alfredo Jaar (; ; born 1956) is a Chilean-born artist, architect, photographer and filmmaker who lives in New York City. He is mostly known as an installation artist, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

—the best known perhaps being the 6-year-long ''The Rwanda Project'' about the 1994

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed H ...

. He has also made numerous public intervention works, like ''The Skoghall Konsthall'' one-day paper museum in Sweden, an early electronic billboard intervention ''A Logo For America,'' and ''The Cloud,'' a performance project on both sides of the Mexico-USA border. He has been featured on ''Art:21.'' He won the Hasselblad Award for 2020. He is the father of musician and composer Nicolas Jaar.

Early life

Jaar was born in 1956 in

Santiago de Chile Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

. From age 5 to 16, he lived in

Martinique Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in ...

before moving back to Chile. In 1982, he moved permanently to New York City.

Work

Jaar art is usually politically motivated, with strategies of representation of real events, the faces of

or the

globalized Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...

world, and sometimes with a certain level of viewer participation (in the case of many public interventions and performances). "There's this huge gap between reality and its possible representations. And that gap is impossible to close. So as artists, we must try different strategies for representation. .. process of identification is fundamental to create empathy, to create solidarity, to create intellectual involvement."

Exhibitions

His work has been shown extensively around the world, notably in the Biennales of

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

(1986, 2007),

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

(1987, 1989, 2010, 2021),

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

(1995),

Kwangju Gwangju () is South Korea's sixth-largest metropolis. It is a designated metropolitan city under the direct control of the central government's Home Minister. The city was also the capital of South Jeolla Province until the provincial office ...

(1995, 2000), Johannesburg (1997), Seville (2006), and the Whitney Biennial (2022). His work, '' Park of the Laments'' was part of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres which opened in 2010 at the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It ...

. For the "Revolution vs Revolution" exhibition held at the

Beirut Art Center Beirut Art Center is a space for exhibiting contemporary art in Beirut, Lebanon History Beirut Art Center opened to public in January 2009. It is managed as a non-profit organization whose founders and executive board members were Sandra Daghe ...

, he produced a new version of his photographic project ''1968''. Important individual exhibitions include the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1992);

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fir ...

, London (1992);

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporar ...

(1992); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1994);

Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, it, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma, italic=no, usually known as MACRO, is a municipal contemporary art museum in Rome, Italy. The museum is housed in two separate places: a former brewery in Via Nizza, ...

(2005); Fundación Telefónica, Santiago (2006); Musée des Beaux Arts,

Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR ...

(2007); the

South London Gallery The South London Gallery, founded 1891, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London. Until 1992, it was known as the South London Art Gallery, and nowadays the acronym SLG is often used. Margot Heller became its direc ...

in 2008.; and

Yorkshire Sculpture Park The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is an art gallery, with both open-air and indoor exhibition spaces, in West Bretton, Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, England. It shows work by British and international artists, including Henry Moore and Barbar ...

, Wakefield UK (2018). Jaar represented Chile at the 2013

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

. One of his two solo exhibitions was shown in Hong Kong as part of the "Hong Kong's Migrant Domestic Workers Project" at Para Site in the exhibition "Afterwork." Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese "boat people" sought refuge in British Hong Kong after the Vietnam War ended in the late 1970s and continued until the early 1990s.

Awards

Jaar has been the recipient of many Honorary Doctorates, including the University of Wolverhampton, UK, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, USA, The New School, New York, USA, SUNY (State University of New York), USA, IDSVA (Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts), New York, USA, Accademia di Belle Arti, Macerata, Italy, and Universidad de Talca, Chile. *1985: Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation *2000:

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

*2013: National Prize for Plastic Arts (Chile) *2018: Hiroshima Art Prize *2020: Hasselblad Award, Gothenburg, Sweden *2022: Mercosur

Konex Award Konex Foundation Awards, or simply Konex Awards, are cultural awards from the Konex Foundation honouring Argentine cultural personalities. History and purpose Konex Awards are granted by the Konex Foundation, created in 1980 in Argentina. The pur ...

, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Family

Alfredo's son Nicolas Jaar is a musician and composer.

References

General references

*''Alfredo Jaar'', Lorenzo Fusi, TAC Collection, Exòrma Ed., Italian/English, May 2012 *Stefan Jonsson, ''1989: Alfredo Jaar, They Loved It So Much, the Revolution'', in ''A brief history of the masses: three revolutions'', New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 119 ff. *Jaar, Alfredo, Mary J. Jacob, and Nancy Princenthal. ''Alfredo Jaar: The Fire This Time : Public Interventions 1979-2005''. Milano: Charta, 2005. Print
Alfredo Jaar: the fire this time : public interventions 1979-2005
*Jaar, Alfredo, and Willie A. Drake. ''Alfredo Jaar: Geography=war''. Richmond, VA: Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1991. Print
Alfredo Jaar: geography=war
*Jaar, Alfredo. ''Let There Be Light: The Rwanda Project 1994 – 1998'', Barcelona: Actar, 1998. Print. *Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. ‘Lament of the Images: Alfredo Jaar and the Ethics of Representation’ in Aperture, Issue 181, pp 36–48

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Jaar, Alfredo 1956 births Chilean artists Chilean architects Chilean photographers Modern artists MacArthur Fellows Living people American conceptual artists American installation artists Chilean people of Palestinian descent Chilean people of Dutch descent