Alfredo Jaar

Architect, photographer, filmmaker, and installation artist Alfredo Jaar left his native Chile in 1981 at the height of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. He settled in New York, where he dedicated himself to tackling such provocative political and social issues as genocide, military violence, and the imbalance of power between industrial and developing nations. As part of his activist mission, Jaar often adopts alternative forms of dissemination—billboards and signs, for example—to confront the public with tragedies that are more comfortably ignored. A recurring theme in Jaar’s work is the contested state of individuals living in difficult situations around the world.