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ART AND HUMAN RIGHTS:
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National Museum of Australia |
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Alfredo Jaar was born in Santiago, Chile, 1956 and undertook studies in film and architecture there before moving to New York in 1982. Jaar has exhibited his work in international exhibitions such as the Venice, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Istanbul and Gwangju Biennials, as well in Documenta. Since the 1980s Jaar has principally created installations that combine elements of photography, architecture and theatre, and often feature graphic documentary images that are both seductive and unsettling. These works explore the complex relationships between developed and developing nations, and art and politics, often highlighting the ironies and injustices that characterise those relationships in the name of profit. Issues of racially-motivated violence, poverty, exploitation, war and genocide have been of most concern to Jaar, for example in Gold in the Morning - a visual examination of miners in the Northeastern Amazon rainfores t- and in his Rwanda Project - a combination of installations, site-specific interventions and actions which served as reminders for those killed in the Rwandan massacres. Commenting in relation to his site-specific work, La Nube/The Cloud, a work created in memory of immigrants who have died attempting to cross the border from Mexico into the US, Jaar has said, "It is an unacceptable tragedy that in the 21st century people still die trying to simply cross a border between two countries." At the heart of Jaar's work is a deep commitment to raising critical social, cultural and political awareness of social injustices throughout the world which he feels many of us have become numb to as observers. He has said, 'I think we live in a great paradox today. On the one hand we are bombarded by thousands of images, but on the other hand it has never before been so controlled, be it by the government or by a certain part of the private sector. Therefore, I believe that we have lost the ability to see and be moved by images.' Jaar's work for this exhibition relates to refugees and border crossings. |
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This page has been authorized by Professor Iain McCalman, Director HRC as relevant
officer. |
