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Alfredo Jaar | Searching for Africa in LIFE, 1996/2022

OFFSCREEN
Grand Garage Haussmann, PARIS
October 16-20, 2024
STAND E.06

In collaboration with Galerie Hubert Winter

Head-Image

Searching for Africa in LIFE compiles all 2,128 covers of LIFE Magazine published between 1936 and 1996. For the United States, LIFE was the first and most influential all-photographic news magazine. With over thirteen million weekly readers at its peak, its mission was to provide the country with a window into the world. When LIFE’s publisher, Henry Luce, launched the publication, his stated purpose was “To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events...” However, the scarcity of covers featuring African subjects throughout the magazine’s sixty-year circulation provides an opportunity to reevaluate this claim. Searching for Africa in LIFE reflects historical American attitudes about culture and race – attitudes that continue to reverberate today.

 

Jaar draws on the archive – the complete collection of LIFE Magazine covers – to offer an exploration of the politics of representation in mainstream media and to interrogate our own assumptions about culture and ethnicity.

Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Alfredo Jaar

Searching for Africa in Life, 1996 / 2022

Eight light-boxes with color transparencies

Work: 154.9 x 1220 cm (61 x 480.3 in.)

Edition of 2 + 1 AP

 

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More precisely, Jaar points to the formation and distribution of knowledge around these issues. What emerges in Searching for Africa in LIFE is a failure to inform, a failure to represent. The diversity and complexities of a rich culture, in this case, the continent and peoples of Africa, are largely ignored and reduced to a handful of patronising, exoticising images. Searching for Africa in LIFE questions the currency of media constructions by calling attention to the power of material collections to reposition our gaze and to bring to light readings, and mis-readings, of our histories.

Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Alfredo Jaar at OFFSCREEN Paris 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Alfredo Jaar (b. 1956, Santiago, Chile) is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who considers social injustices and human suffering through thought-provoking installations. Throughout his career Jaar has created compelling work that examines the way we engage with, and represent humanitarian crises. Through photography, film and installation he provokes the viewer to question our thought process around how we view the world around us. Jaar has explored political and social issues, including genocide, the displacement of refugees across borders, and the balance of power between the first and third world. Jaar’s work has been shown extensively around the world.