The Silence
<p>After moving to New York in 1982, Alfredo Jaar turned from architecture to photographic installation work. His projects address the harsh conditions of life in eco-nomically underdeveloped regions “to bring news of the world to the art world.” In his 1987 installation <em>1+1+1</em>, three photographic light boxes displayed upside-down images of Salvadoran street children, including this one. He cropped photojournalist Steve Cagan’s original photograph at the children’s waists, removing their faces and leaving only the distended bellies and bare feet that signal their impoverished condition. On the floor below each light box, gold frames suggested three different relationships between art and reality: detachment (an empty frame), self-reflection (frames within frames), and a limited but corrected reflection (a framed mirror).</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1987
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 26.7 × 38.2 cm (10 9/16 × 15 1/16 in.); Paper: 32.8 × 44.2 cm (12 15/16 × 17 7/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Alfredo Jaar
Artist
Installation
Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean-born artist, architect, photographer and filmmaker who lives in New York City. He is mostly known as an installation artist, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and war—the best known perhaps being the 6-year-long The Rwanda Project about the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He has also made numerous public intervention works, like The Skoghall Konsthall one-day paper museum in Sweden, an early electronic billboard intervention A Logo For America, and The Cloud, a performance project on both sides of the Mexico-USA border. He has been featured on Art:21. He won the Hasselblad Award for 2020.
Full artist profile →More
More by Alfredo Jaar
Muxima
2005 · Digital color film, with sound; 36 min. loop
Lament of the Images
2002 · Plexiglass text panels (texts by David Levi Strauss), light wall, and mixed media
Lament of the Images
2002 · 2 aluminium tables, glass, Perspex, neon lights and motor
Rwanda, Rwanda
1994 · Photolithograph
He Ram
1991 · Screenprint ink on mirror
1 + 1 + 1
1987 · Three silver dye transparencies, three light boxes, gilded frames and mirrors
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Alfredo Jaar
- Year
- 1987
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 26.7 × 38.2 cm (10 9/16 × 15 1/16 in.); Paper: 32.8 × 44.2 cm (12 15/16 × 17 7/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1987-111919
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified