And yet

Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar - And Yet, 2019, Neon 177,8 x 108,5 cm, Courtesy Goodman Gallery London and the artist New York

‘For Jaar, art is the impossible answer to an impossible question:
how do we make art when the world is in such a state?’
 - Alfredo Jaar, The Temptation to Exist (2022), Galerie Lelong & Co, New York.

Alfredo Jaar's practice is a critical search for the relationship between art and politics. What is the role of art in a society full of violence and unrest? Can art make a difference, no matter how small? Jaar was shocked by the world's indifference to the genocide in Rwanda, one of the most violent events in our recent history in which at least one million Rwandans were murdered and two million Rwandans uprooted. As a critique of the paternalistic and sometimes even hateful information disseminated by international media, he created a series of works (The Rwanda Project, 1994-2000) based on his own experiences in and about Rwanda, where he traveled in July 1994 to witness the genocide. For an exhibition at Goodman Gallery in 2019, he created And Yet as a complementary work to this series. The text is a stanza from a poem by Anna Akhmatova, Requiem (1934-1961). It took Akhmatova several decades to find the words to describe the experience of the Great Purge under the Stalinist regime (1936-1938). "So much to do today/ kill memory/ kill pain/ turn heart into stone/ and yet, prepare to live again." This work brings us uncomfortably close to the reality of today. Although the storm does not seem to calm down, it is important to find strength in solidarity.

2019 - Glass tube neon, 177,8 x 108,5 cm
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery

Alfredo Jaar
°1956, Santiago, Chile

Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), Sao Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021) as well as Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002). Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1992); Whitechapel, London (1992); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1994); The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1995); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2005). Major recent surveys of his work have taken place at Musée des Beaux Arts, Lausanne (2007); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2008); Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlinische Galerie and Neue Gesellschaft fur bildende Kunst e.V., Berlin (2012); Rencontres d’Arles (2013); KIASMA, Helsinki (2014); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2017); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); SESC Pompeia, São Paulo (2021) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima (2023). The artist has realized more than seventy public interventions around the world. Over sixty monographic publications have been published about his work. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020. His work can be found in institutional collections as well as in private collections worldwide.