Alfredo Jaar

Cultura=Capitale (Culture=Capital) is the luminous equation that Alfredo Jaar to produce to leave a message as simple as it is unequivocal: a slogan conveyed through the careful reading of the pages of Antonio Gramsci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Nanni Balestrini, who are important points of reference for the artist, either only hinted at or explicitly cited in several of his works, such as Gramsci è vivo (Gramsci is Alive) (2020) or Vogliamo tutto (We Want Everything) (2016). “The spaces of art and culture are the last to remain free, which is why they are precious. Culture is our real capital,” Jaar explains. 

(Biography) Artist, architect and film maker, Alfredo Jaar (Santiago de Chile, 1956) has lived and worked in New York since 1982, but trained in Chile oppressed by the censorship of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Believing in the importance of the role of the artist, who can propose “models for thinking about the world,” Jaar creates conceptual works and public interventions that speak to individual conscience. 

He has participated in five editions of the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013) and other major international exhibitions such as the São Paulo Biennale or documenta in Kassel. His works, which earned him the Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), the Mac Arthur Fellowship (2004), the Premio Extremadura a la Creación (2006), Hiroshima Art Prize (2018), l'Hasselblad Award (2020) and IV Albert Camus Mediterranean Prize (2024) - have been exhibited in some of the most important international collections. Recent solo exhibitions of Alfredo Jaar include Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); SESC Pompeia, São Paulo (2021); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima (2023).  

Silvia Maria Sara Cammarata