Alfredo Jaar, The Silence of Nduwayezu, 1997; One million slides, light table, magnifiers, illuminated wall text. Credit: Goodman Gallery
Just like his piece uniting some of the 1994 covers of Newsweek magazines ignoring the Rwandan genocide until August, the art of Alfredo Jaar is known to deal with strategies of representation of real events.
Unlike most ‘news’ photographers, in the past three decades Jaar has been able to look at dramatic events with a creative, intelligent, and eagle-eyed vision, and always with the highest respect for the people affected. His body of work for this show, 25 years after the events in Rwanda, is utterly compelling.
Jaar is undoubtedly a rare sort of artist. Some of the pieces on display, though created between 1994 and 2000, are strikingly relevant for our present times. Between 2009 to 2016, I worked as a reporter on African affairs, and can attest to the fact that Jaar’s understanding of the lack of positive representation of Sub-Saharan people in the media is profound and, I would dare to say, even healing.
Jaar’s strength comes from his deep connection to reality. “I’m an architect making art now, and for an architect, context is everything,” Alfredo Jaar explained to me. “I respond to the reality around me; I’m into the real world. So I’ve never been a studio artist, but a project artist. My motto is that before acting into the world, I need to understand it so my practice starts every morning with reading the news. I’ve done that for decades now.”
Alfredo Jaar, Untitled (Newsweek), 1994; 17 lightboxes with color transparencies. Credit: Goodman Gallery
Before acting into the world, I need to understand it, so my practice starts every morning with reading the news. I’ve done that for decades now
Before the genocide started, he already had a folder on Rwanda. “So, when the killings started, I accumulated so much information,” he adds. “I was thus shocked by the journalistic coverage and the general indifference of the so-called ‘international community’.”
The story didn’t make the front page anywhere in April 1994. “In May, I read a first item in the New York Times – but on page 6, and was enraged. Most countries, even after a month of massacres, insisted it wasn’t a genocide, but ‘just a civil war’, in order not to intervene. But I had evidence that all these government knew.”
So Alfredo decided to go himself. It wasn’t easy. He tried to go with NGOs but wasn’t granted a valid visa. He finally managed to get a UN press card in July 1994, which enabled him to spend three weeks in Rwanda with only an assistant from his studio. “I witnessed the aftermath, could see dead bodies everywhere. And took about 3500 photographs.”
I witnessed the aftermath, could see dead bodies everywhere. And took about 3500 photographs.
Alfredo Jaar, Embrace, 1995, Video. Credit: Goodman Gallery
It was, of course, not easy to work back home with such a material. “When I went back to New York, I was blocked for a while,” Jaar humbly confessed. “I felt that showing images wouldn’t make any difference at that stage. But I had the experience of being there that I could share, and in my head the voices of people I talked to. So I wondered: how can I do something different?”
He pondered on the difficulty to represent such a level of violence and cruelty, to communicate about it. Slowly, he developed one piece after the other. The first one that came out, presented in the basement of the gallery’s exhibition, is a series displaying a dozen covers of Newsweek magazines from 1994. On enlightened support stands, they show that the magazine didn’t put Rwanda on the cover until August.
Other pieces are made with light, one engraving a sentence summarising the events in white, with lit letters on a large black board, making it as painful to read for the eyes as it is for the mind to cope with. Another one is a pile of photo slides, representing only the same sad eyes of a young boy, but in a million copies, trying to engage people with a tragic story through the experience of only one person in pain.
With lit letters on a large black board, making it as painful to read for the eyes as it is for the mind to cope with
On the ground floor is an installation on three channels showing how the then American president Bill Clinton talked to the UN to demonstrate that the massacres were not a genocide. This was a pivotal act in there being an absence of any UN intervention. The film, in its sharp, deep cynicism, resonates even more deeply once you’ve seen the previous works.
Alfredo Jaar, Six Seconds, 2000. Credit: Goodman Gallery
Since working on these events, Alfredo Jaar talked many times of the “huge gap between reality and its possible representations” – a gap, he believes, that is impossible to close. As an artist he constantly tries to reinvent different strategies for representation, “to create empathy, solidarity and intellectual involvement” with the subject in his photographs, films and performances.
The other photographs exhibited in the show are centred on children. They deliberately exclude the scenes of massacres to highlight the solidarity between two boys or, in one specific instance, the distress of a young girl running away from the Rwandan capital of Kigali after the killing of her parents, in a piece named ‘6 seconds’. This is a blurred portrait of the girl in a deep blue dress on a sunny day, encapsulating a deep sense of distress. This one stayed hidden in Jaar’s drawer for years.
“I was going to meet this girl, to interview her,” Jaar explained, “but when I approached her she turned around and left. I took this quick shot with my camera without even looking into the lens. I didn’t use it once back home because it was out of focus, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that image.”
“Then in 2000, I had an epiphany: I realised that trying to communicate the truth of that experience simply cannot be. Everything I was trying to do was actually ‘out of focus’. So that piece became the central one of my work. I called it ‘6 seconds’ because that’s the amount of time I had with this girl. And it is the last work I chose for that project.”
I realised trying to communicate the truth of that experience simply cannot be. Everything I was trying to do was actually ‘out of focus’
Alfredo Jaar, Rwanda 1994, 1994; Ten postcards, letraset frame. Credit: Goodman Gallery
Alfredo Jaar is nonetheless far from ready to give up on art. Described as a pioneer attempting “to fuse historical investigation and aesthetics”, producing “a modern ‘Guernica’” by a critic, his goal, is to contribute to change in our world, to denounce political inaction, and condemn our crimes.
To do so “in real life” too, and not through social media or technology. To bring change, he insists, “we need to go places, to talk to people, and to share their pain.” Personally, I couldn’t agree more.
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‘25 Years Later’ is on at the Goodman Gallery until 11th January 2020. Free entrance.
Goodman Gallery: 26 Cork Street, Mayfair, London, W1S 3ND.
