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 Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often cal ...

, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

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

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...

. 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 The Hasselblad Award (in full: Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography) is an award granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements". History First awarded in 1980, the award—and the Hasselblad Foundation—wa ...

for 2020. He is the father of musician and composer

Nicolas Jaar Nicolas Jaar (, ; né Nicolás Jaar; born January 10, 1990) is a Chilean-American composer and musician. Among his notable works are the albums '' Space Is Only Noise'' (2011), ''Sirens'' (2016), and '' Cenizas'' (2020). He has also released th ...

Early life

Jaar was born in 1956 in

Santiago de Chile Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital city, capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's Chilean Central Valley, central valley and is the center ...

. From age 5 to 16, he lived in

Martinique Martinique ( ; or ; Kalinago language, Kalinago: or ) is an island in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It was previously known as Iguanacaera which translates to iguana island in Carib language, Kariʼn ...

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 is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...

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 ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

(1986, 2007),

São Paulo São Paulo (; ; Portuguese for 'Paul the Apostle, Saint Paul') is the capital of the São Paulo (state), state of São Paulo, as well as the List of cities in Brazil by population, most populous city in Brazil, the List of largest cities in the ...

(1987, 1989, 2010, 2021),

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

(1995),

Kwangju Gwangju (; ), formerly romanized as Kwangju, 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 Pro ...

(1995, 2000), Johannesburg (1997), Seville (2006), the Whitney Biennial (2022), and ''Every Sound Is a Shape of Time'',

Pérez Art Museum Miami Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...

(2024). 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, the Garden at Newfields and more. It is located at the corner of No ...

. 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 Dag ...

, he produced a new version of his photographic project ''1968''. Important individual exhibitions include the

New Museum of Contemporary Art The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-name ...

, 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 fi ...

, London (1992);

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art art gallery, museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side, Chicago, Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is on ...

(1992);

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened Moderna Museet Malmö in Malmö. History The museum opened in Stockh ...

, Stockholm (1994);

Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome The Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, , 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, in the Salario quartiere of the city; and a form ...

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

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

(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 direct ...

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 Barb ...

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

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

. 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 Vietnamese boat people () were refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. This migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but continued well into the earl ...

sought refuge in British Hong Kong after the Vietnam War ended in the late 1970s and continued until the early 1990s. In 2022, Jaar presented a major video installation titled ''06.01.2020'' at the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

, New York, commenting on the

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a Decentralization, decentralized political and social movement that aims to highlight racism, discrimination and Racial inequality in the United States, racial inequality experienced by black people, and to pro ...

protests in 2020 in Washington DC. His work can found in the permanent collections of art museums around the

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, and

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

, such as the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

, and the

Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

, among others.

Awards

*1985:

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

from the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is a private foundation formed in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Gr ...

*2000:

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

*2013:

National Prize for Plastic Arts (Chile) The National Prize for Plastic Arts () was created in Chile in 1992 under Law 19169 as one of the replacements of the National Prize of Art of Chile, National Prize of Art. It is granted "to the person who has distinguished himself by his achieveme ...

*2018: Hiroshima Art Prize *2020:

, 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 p ...

, Buenos Aires, Argentina *2024: Mediterranean Albert Camus Prize, Menorca, Spain

Other activities

Jaar was part of the jury that selecte
Ayoung Kim
for the 202
LG Guggenheim Award
an international art prize established as part of a long-term global partnership between

LG Group LG Corporation (or LG Group), formerly known as Lucky-Goldstar, is a South Korean multinational conglomerate founded by Koo In-hwoi in 1947 and managed by successive generations of his family. It is the fourth-largest company in South Korea. ...

and the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

to recognize groundbreaking artists in technology-based art.Alt URL
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Family

Alfredo's son

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