Alfredo Jaar
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve
April 11–September 7, 2014
Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Mannerheiminaukio 2
00100 Helsinki
Finland
www.kiasma.fi
www.alfredojaar.net
A major exhibition of works by Alfredo Jaar will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma on 11 April. This exhibition, dedicated to the work of one of the most uncompromising, compelling, and innovative artists working today, will be his first major solo exhibition in Finland. The artist’s critical and humanist worldview is an urgent statement in the current world situation.
The overriding theme in Jaar’s large-scale installations, films, photographs, objects and neon works is human and social ethics—our responsibility for our own fate and that of others. Presented on two floors at Kiasma, the retrospective show comprises more than 40 works from 1974 to 2014, including such ground-breaking works as Lament of the Images, The Silence of Nduwayezu and The Sound of Silence.
For this exhibition Kiasma will also re-create One Million Finnish Passports, Jaar’s historic landmark work shown for the first time in Helsinki in 1995 and then destroyed.
Born in Chile in 1956, Alfredo Jaar has lived in New York since 1982. An artist, architect and filmmaker whose installations and public interventions have earned him international acclaim throughout the world, the artist has previously exhibited individual works in Finland in both the 1995 and 2011 ARS exhibitions and in 2010 as part of the Capital of Culture year in the Turku Archipielago.
The Head Curator of the exhibition is Museum Director Pirkko Siitari. The title of the exhibition, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, is the title of a poem by the late American writer Adrienne Rich (1929–2012), an important source of inspiration for the artist. The eponymous exhibition publication features eight new major essays and a conversation between the artist and Pirkko Siitari.
A media preview of the exhibition will be held on Tuesday, 8 April, at 11am. Please let us know if you plan on attending by email to piia.laita [at] kiasma.fi. The opening ceremony will be on Thursday, 10 April, starting at 6pm.
International seminar on the art of Alfredo Jaar
Kiasma Theatre, 21 May
Together with Frame Visual Art Finland, Kiasma organises a day-long seminar in conjunction with the artist’s retrospective exhibition, including a panel discussion with the artist in attendance.
For more information, please contact:
Kati Kivinen, Curator: kati.t.kivinen [at] kiasma.fi / T +358 (0) 294 500 540
Kiasma Communications: Piia Laita: piia.laita [at] kiasma.fi / T +358 (0) 294 500 507
Päivi Oja: paivi.oja [at] kiasma.fi / T +358 (0) 294 500 534
Images: www.kiasma.fi/press
