Alfredo Jaar

(Chilean, born 1956)

Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean Conceptual artist who considers social injustices and human suffering through thought-provoking installations. In his work The Sound of Silence (2006)—a wooden structure filled with lights and a video loop—Jaar confronts the story of Kevin Carter, a South African photojournalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his image of a starving child and vulture. The installation and accompanying video loop examine questions surrounding empathy, power, and the political gesture of an image in the face of tragedy. “As we all know, the objective and mission of the photojournalist is to show us the reality of the world,” he explained. “And in order to capture that reality, they go to dangerous and tragic places at the expense of their lives. I see them as the conscience of our humanity; they represent for me what is left of our humanity.” Born on February 5, 1956 in Santiago, Chile, he grew up on Martinique Island before returning to Santiago at the age of 16. Jaar studied filmmaking at the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano de Cultura, and architecture at the University of Chile. Moving to New York in 1981, at the height of Pinochet’s military rule, one of his first public pieces was This is Not America (A Logo for America) (1987). Jaar has continued to address contentious themes over the years, including the Rwandan Genocide, gold mining in Brazil, environmental pollution in Nigeria, and immigration issues between the United States and Mexico. He currently lives and works in New York, NY. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.