Dislocacion Project
La Cordillera de los Andes (CB)

Alfredo Jaar will carry out a new photographic show as a homage to Clotario Blest, a well known Chilean union leader, from who we have few documents before his death. Clotario Blest was photographed by Jaar on the 80s. During this memorable photographic session, the artist suggested Clotario Blest to represent the sinuosity of the Andes Cordillera because, according to the artist, he represented the human version of the Cordillera, its  presence, its solidity and majesty.

According to the words of the artist, “it is impossible to conceive the dignity and the achievements of the Chilean worker without Clotario Blest, he is an integral part of the social scenario as well as the Cordillera is part of our urban landscape”. Just the presence of Clotario Blest as photographic model enhances the dislocations that the recent history of the country has, since its figure carries a joint of requests and social fights that has been gestated during the last decades in Chile.

Alfredo Jaar 1956

Alfredo Jaar ‘s trajectory is widely known as a quest to awaken the sensibility of some of the greatest social dramas in the Third World. He is the author of a body of work which includes photography, film, installations and light boxes and urban interventions. After a pilgrimage to Rwanda in 1994 during which he was witness to the catastrophical consequences of the civil war, Jaar experienced his trauma as a dark and silent space. The shocking images of the massacres became devoid of meaning and because of this, he began to negotiate these crude realities with texts and more subtle visual images. His works are critical and full of compassion, they maintain a visuality with no narration and leave the image to be independent, without distraction and absorbing.

www.alfredojaar.net

/ Created and curated by Ingrid Wildi Merino in Santiago, Chile and curated by Ingrid Wildi Merino and Kathleen Bühler at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland. wildimerino.curatorial@gmail.com