Alfredo Jaar
March 2, 2016
The Nasher Museum presented Alfredo Jaar, an international artist and filmmaker, whose work was part of A Material Legacy: The Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection of Contemporary Art;. Born in Chile and now living and working in New York City, Jaar is known for politically motivated work. He delivered the Annual Rothschild Lecture, a talk entitled, “It Is Difficult.”
Jaar has created more than 60 public interventions, including a monumental LED screen in Times Square, A Logo for America, in 2014. His project commissioned by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas as part of its 10th anniversary, entitled Music (Everything I know I learned the day my son was born), featured the real-time wails of newborns from three local hospitals inside a wood-and-Plexiglass pavilion. It was a poignant and collaborative work where visitors could sit and listen to the sounds of some of the city’s newest citizens. Jaar’s work was shown in the Chilean Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1987 and 2002.
He has received numerous awards and in 2000 became a MacArthur Fellow. His work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, MCA in Chicago, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles, the Tate in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Centro Reina Sofia in Spain and many more.
“Reality cannot be photographed or represented,” Jaar says. “We can only create a new reality. And my dilemma is how to make art out of a reality that most of us would rather ignore. How do you make art when the world is in such a state? My answer has been to make mistakes, but when I can, to choose them.”
The annual lecture is made possible by Barbra and Andrew Rothschild.
Photo of Alfredo Jaar by J Caldwell.