Sebastián Rodríguez y Vasti

Assignment #3: Research Project

Professor Simon Glass

Conceptualism In Photography

Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean artist, now based in NYC, whose work could be described

as conceptual, and who had an impact in the way I make and understand my own

work. He was born in 1965 in Santiago, Chile, and is now based in New York City.

He studied at the University of Chile and went on to become an internationally

recognized maker, with numerous international shows, including thrice at the Venice

Biennale (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Writer Mari Carmen Ramírez, in her 1993 text Blue Print Circuits: Conceptual

Art and politics in Latin America situated Jaar’s work within a “second generation” of

Latin American artists who stretched out the scope of North American

Conceptualism after, according to critic Simón Marchán Fiz, whom Ramírez quotes,

it had reached a self-reflexive deadlock. Stemming from the principles of

Conceptualism as used by artists like Joseph Kosuth or Sol LeWitt, and passing

through a “first generation” of Latin American conceptual artists who made work in

the 60s (including Eugenio Dittborn and Cildo Meireles), artists like Jaar would adopt

the fundamental principles of North American Conceptualism and modify them.

Institutional critique, for example, would be applied to issues of broader social and

political character. The art object, having been de-emphasized or dematerialized,

would be reclaimed by integrating it with the concept (think of Meireles’ Insertions)

(Ramírez, 156, 166).

 Jaar’s work The Geometry of Conscience, for example, is an installation

which consists of backlit silhouettes of the heads of 500 people that suffered the

crimes against humanity committed by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from 1973

to 1990. Among them are detainees and people that went missing, and every

silhouette represents a specific, identifiable individual (Valdés). The walls at both

sides of the backlit silhouettes are parallel mirrors, extending the figures indefinitely

as the mirrors reflect each other, creating a seemingly endless stream of silhouettes.

The work is permanently installed in the basement of the Museum of Memory in

Santiago, Chile, which is solely dedicated to this troubled period of Chilean history

(Museo de la Memoria). The conceptual approach is evident in the abstracted, light-

filled heads and their endless replicas, and the work itself is placed in an institution

that is extremely relevant to the subject matter of the work. Undoubtedly within

Ramírez’ definition, the work balances the evocative human silhouettes with their

indexicality, as being recognizable ties them to an identity, a time and a place of

significant specificity. The graphic representation of these individuals interacts at the

same time with the way they’re installed, the institution that hosts them, and the city

that houses the institution, which was a central site of Pinochet’s oppression.

Lights in the City is also a relevant work by Jaar. It consisted of a light

installed in the Copula of the Marche Bonsecours in Montreal, which could be turned

on by pressing buttons installed at the entrances of several homeless shelters in the

area. Every time somebody entered the shelter, they would find a poster with a text

describing the work and the purpose of the button (Jaar). The Copula, which is a

landmark with significant visibility, flickered away until the project was uninstalled

(Phongsirivech and Jaar), illustrating the homelesness crisis affecting the city.
 Present in both works is an undeniable attention and commitment with context

and pressing social or political subject matter, and also a markedly conceptual

approach to every work, given the symbolic, allusive (but still direct) nature of the

projects.

I am unsure of who might have influenced Jaar directly, but I’m inclined to

think that artists that Ramírez mentions as antecedents were people whose work

was studied by Jaar. This would mean artists such as Robery Barry, Kosuth and

LeWitt, and then the “first generation” of Latin American conceptual artists, including

Dittborn, Gonzalo Díaz (both Chilean), Meireles and Luis Camnitzer (Ramírez, 156).

They all shared similar approaches based on conceptualism, and they all adapted

that approach to meet the needs of their particular goal, be it the state of museums

and art institutions or the issues and demands of their individual social and political

contexts.

Some others that Ramírez doesn’t mention, including the politically and

socially-oriented, Santiago-based Colectivo Acciones de Arte (or CADA, of which

artists like Lotty Rosenfeld and Juan Castillo were members), are also likely to have

influenced Jaar. CADA were explicitly concerned with a sort of renewal of both the

theoretical foundation and the practice of art in Chile in 1979 (Memoria Chilena),

eight years before Jaar was first widely publicized for his work “A Logo For America”

at Times Square. Finally, legendary pioneering Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica was

likely an influence. Not only for the kind the socially-involved, installation-based work

he made, but also because of the underlying ideas in his work Tropicália and within

the Tropicalismo movement, which evidentiated the distance between the “third

world” and the “first world,” which is a distance explicitly and directly examined in

Jaar’s work (Ramírez, 158, 161).

 Apart from those whom I’ve just mentioned, there are bound to be many,

many artists and art-related experiences that shaped Jaar’s motives and approach.

These are some reasonable connections I’ve drawn from mainly in Latin American

artists.

Images:

The Geometry of Conscience, Alfredo Jaar, 2010. More images

available at https://alfredojaar.net/projects/2010/the-geometry-of-

conscience/

Lights in the City, Alfredo Jaar, 1999.

More images available at

 https://alfredojaar.net/projects/1999/lights-in-the-city/

Tropicália, Hélio Oiticica, 1966-1967.

P15 Parangolé Capa 11, “Incorporo a revolta” [I embody revolt], Hélio Oiticica,

1967.
 Works Cited

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Alfredo Jaar.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 1

Feb 2020. Accessed 14 Mar. 2020.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfredo-Jaar.

Jaar, Alfredo. “Lights in the City, 1999. www.alfredojaar.net. Accessed 14 Mar. 2020.

Memoria Chilena. “CADA: Crisis en el arte y resistencia política” [CADA: Crisis in art

and political resistance.]. http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-

3342.html. Accessed 15 Mar. 2020.

Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos. “Sobre el Museo.”

https://ww3.museodelamemoria.cl/sobre-el-museo. Accessed 14 Mar. 2020.

Phongsirivech, Pimploy and Alfredo Jaar. “Alfredo Jaar: All art is socially conscious”.

Interview Magazine, 16 Oct. 2017.

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/alfredo-jaar-art-socially-conscious.

Accessed 14 Mar. 2020.

Ramírez, Mari Carmen. “Blue Print Circuits: Conceptual Art and politics in Latin

America.” RASMUSSEM, Aldo (ed.). Latinamerican artists of the twentieth

century. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: MOMA, 1993.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. “Alfredo Jaar.”

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/alfredo-jaar. Accessed 14 Mar.

2020.

Valdés, Adriana. “La Geometría de la Conciencia.” Museo de la Memoria y los

Derechos Humanos, https://ww3.museodelamemoria.cl/sobre-el-museo/.

Accessed 14 Mar. 2020.

Sebastian, excellent! Please see my comments above.

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