Alfredo Jaar (Santiago, Chile, 1956) is an artist, architect, and filmmaker. His practice spans languages such as installation, photography, video, poetry, urban intervention, and public projects, with works that focus on humanitarian crises, global inequalities, historical erasures, and the role of the media in shaping contemporary narratives. Working from what he calls “responsible knowledge,” Jaar develops projects deeply grounded in research and profoundly engaged with the contexts in which they are inserted.
Trained as an architect, the artist began his career under the repression of the Chilean dictatorship, an experience that definitively shaped both his generation and his worldview. Faced with institutionalized censorship, he chose to keep creating, seeking cracks in the system and developing critical modes of expression, even in the face of constant risk. For Jaar, making art was a form of resistance.
In the 1980s, after establishing himself in New York, he began applying architectural methodologies to art, arguing that before any action, one must deeply understand the place and conditions of engagement. This approach led him to define himself as a “project artist,” whose work begins with the idea—rather than any specific technique—and then seeks the most appropriate form of expression. Over the years, his artistic vocabulary has expanded through collaborations with specialists from various fields, adapting to the complexity of each subject he addresses.
A critique of the “politics of images”—both by omission and by excess—is central to his trajectory, which is also marked by activism within the art system itself. For Jaar, art is only relevant when it is informed by a critical awareness of its time and willing to act in the world. Beyond denunciation, his work also proposes visibility and attentive listening. In his own words, when confronted with silenced tragedies, one must choose between ignoring them or taking a stand. Fully aware of the contradictions and risks involved, the artist chooses to act, embracing the possibility of error as an ethical stance.
Jaar's work has been extensively exhibited around the world. He participated in the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013) and the São Paulo Biennial (1987, 1989, 2010, 2021), as well as in Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002).
Recent solo exhibitions include: KINDL, Berlin, Germany (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan (2023); Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom (2017); and KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland (2014).
A major retrospective of his work took place in 2012 across three institutions in Berlin: Berlinische Galerie, Alte Nationalgalerie, and Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst. In 2014, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, organized the most comprehensive retrospective of his career.
The artist has realized more than seventy public interventions around the world. Over eighty monographic publications have been published about his work. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. He received the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018 and the Hasselblad Award in 2020. In 2024 he was awarded the IV Albert Camus Mediterranean Prize. In 2025, he was selected as the recipient of the Edward MacDowell Medal.
His work is part of the collections of institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum (New York); the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago); MOCA and LACMA (Los Angeles); MASP, Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Tate (London); Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); Nationalgalerie (Berlin); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid); Moderna Museet (Stockholm); MAXXI and MACRO (Rome); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebaek); Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art and Tokushima Modern Art Museum (Japan); M+ (Hong Kong); in addition to dozens of other institutions and private collections around the world.