Alfredo Jaar: Nous l’avons tant aimée, la révolution

04.07 / 2015 – 10.01/2016
[mac], Marseille

The [mac] musée d’art contemporain de Marseille announces the first major exhibition of Alfredo Jaar in a French museum titled Alfredo Jaar: Nous l’avons tant aimée, la révolution from July 4, 2015 to January 10, 2016.

Recognized as one of the most uncompromising, compelling, and innovative artists working today, Jaar’s work from the last 40 years does not cease to remind us of the ethical role of art and culture. Whether through simple photographs or ambitious installations, Alfredo Jaar enlightens and awakens the conscience of his public with a rare but vital poetry.

Specially conceived for the [mac] in Marseille, Jaar’s project Nous l’avons tant aimée, la révolution follows the concept of his earlier project “Abbiamo amato tanto la rivoluzione” exhibited at Fondazione Merz in Torino in 2013. The title of the exhibition is inspired from the eponymous 1986 book by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a French-German politician and student leader during France’s May 1968 movement, in which the author interviews activists and intellectuals from across the world.

Consisting of about 77 artworks, the exhibition is composed around a large installation of 150 tons of broken glass, covering the floor of most of the exhibition area. Visitors walking on this dark shattered but  reflecting surface will be taken through a space of collective history. Through this journey, they will be invited to reflect on what remains from difficult moments of history and, most importantly, how conflict between order and disorder can become ground for hope and cultural rebirth.

In juxtaposition to his own works, primarily created as resistance to the dictatorship of the Pinochet regime in Chile (1973-1989), Alfredo Jaar has selected works from over than forty artists, who in the 60s, 70s, and 80s also sought to resist and change the world. Artists included are Alighiero e Boetti, Daniel Buren, Luis Camnitzer, Antonio Caro, Lygia Clark, Hanne Darboven, Gino De Dominicis, Valie Export, Öyvind Fahlström, Jean-Luc Godard, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Eva Hesse, Jenny Holzer, Bas Jan Ader, On Kawara, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Josef Koudelka, Yayoi Kusama, Mierle Laderman-Ukeles, Glenn Ligon, Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Fabio Mauri, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, Mario Merz, Yoko Ono, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Liliana Porter, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Nancy Spero, Shomei Tomatsu, Niele Toroni, Lawrence Weiner and Art Workers’ Coalition. By also including André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, the artist traces the origins of this artistic and cultural revolution to two major artists and intellectuals of the XXth century.

Simultaneous to his exhibition at the musée d’art contemporain, Alfredo Jaar’s work Culture = Capital, a major public commission produced by the [mac] for Marseille 2013 European Cultural Capital and recently acquired by the Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Marseille, will continue to be on view at the BMVR (Bibliothèque Municipale à Vocation Régionale).

Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect and filmmaker. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009, 2013), the Sao Paulo Biennale (1987, 1989, 2010) and Documenta in Kassel (1987, 2002).