Alfredo Jaar: Interview, Details

Lament of the Images, 2002
Installation

From an interview by
Pat Binder and Gerhard Haupt.

Cape Town

Pennsylvania

Kabul

The work is a metaphor for the blindness in our society. I think we live in a great paradox today. On the one hand we are bombarded by thousands of images, but on the other hand it has never before been so controlled, be it by the government or by a certain part of the private sector. Therefore, I believe that we have lost the ability to see and be moved by images. Nothing moves us anymore, nothing has any meaning. My work is a kind of poetic meditation about the power of images.

In the first room there are 3 stories to read, then you go through a labyrinth and reach another hall with a glistening light that blinds you. In another sense it is like the request "let there be light", like an appeal to clarify this situation.

(Translation: Holly Austin)

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