Alfredo Jaar

In Alfredo Jaar, Florencia San Martín analyzes the work of the prominent Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar, whose work challenges the linear and triumphalist temporality of Western modernity, which obscures the violence of colonization and globalization. Instead, San Martín argues that Jaar’s work represents decolonial time, exposing the limits of the violent systems we oppose but inhabit. His art, she maintains, is informed by and responds to two interconnected historical events relevant to his own life: the US-backed military coup that established Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, and the implementation of its corollary neoliberal economic system around the world. San MartÍn explores the key themes in Jaar’s artistic practice – mourning, accountability, and failure – which situate the victims of the Chilean regime in a global context, directly confront the architects of atrocity, and question how ideas of diversity and inclusion have been co-opted by modern neoliberal discourses. Alfredo Jaar enables us to reimage art history, offering a fresh paradigm from where to think about global contemporary art today.