"In the case of Rwanda, I followed the tragedy from the beginning. I was outraged at how we were told about what was happening. 'Yesterday, 35,000 bodies were recovered; they were floating on the Kagera River.' Thirty-five thousand bodies—and it was just a five-line story on Page 7. 'I have to go,' I thought, 'There is something I have to say about this'."
Alfredo Jaar about The Rwanda Project in Art 21
In the video Embrace, two young boys hold one another tightly, both as a sign of friendship and for mutual support in the face of a scene, concealed from the viewer’s gaze by the children’s back. While the image may seem innocuous at first glance, the body language suggests pain, solidarity, and love, feelings that the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar argues were absent from the international community’s response to the rwandan tragedy.
The Rwanda Project is an homage to the victims of the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and is composed of twentyone multimedia works produced over a period of six years. This project highlights the personal accounts collected by the artist right after the genocide, and pays tribute with strength and modesty, to the lives broken he encounters on the ground. Exhibited worldwide, this important body of work illustrates the artist's commitment and ability to link ethics and aesthetics, art and politics, while remaining respectful to the subjects he portrays.
Alfredo Jaar has taken part in several of the most prestigious Biennials such as Venice, São Paulo, and Documenta in Kassel. Numerous solo exhibitions have been devoted to him and his work can be found in the most important private and museum collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid.
Alfredo Jaar (Born 1956, Chile)
Embrace, 1995
Estimate: 50 000 / 70 000 €
