Alfredo Jaar: It Is Difficult

Overview

Chilean-born, New York-based Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect and filmmaker known for his uncompromising, compelling and innovative work and probing issues of global concern.

Not one to shy away from controversy, his work covers difficult subjects, from genocide to AIDS, reminding observers of the challenges we still face in the world today. Over the past 30 years, Jaar has pushed the boundaries of art and influenced how it is perceived. 

This May, Jaar will present his first lecture in New Zealand, on the occasion of the exhibition Space to Dream: Recent Art from South America unrolling at the Auckland Art Gallery. Showcasing 41 artists and collectives from across South America, the work suggests how artists see a social significance for their work and how as rebels and revolutionaries, dreamers and poets, they have challenged, embraced, explained or transformed their realities, lives, cultures and spaces.

Jaar will introduce his most recent projects realised around the world as well as selection of his most iconic works, including A Logo for America - an anti-American video installation that screened in New York's Times Square, and The Skoghall Konsthall - the world's first paper museum, which he created only to burn to the ground 24 hours after its creation in order to ignite a community's yearning for a space for culture.