Alfredo Jarr

A visiting artist - his talk reconnected me with why I want to make art - something that can get lost in all the conceptualization!

Here is a letter I wrote to him afterwards. I haven't stopped thinking about him.

Dear Alfredo Jarr –

I was so moved by your talk at the SMFA and your lecture later that night at the Museum that I feel compelled to write to you.

You spoke of how Rwanda made you distrust images, and I have been thinking about that ever since. I had exactly the opposite experience with Rwanda. At the time, I had been living in the wilds of rural of Mexico, completely cut off from news of any kind, and so was completely unaware of what was happening in Rwanda, until I went into a city one day and saw a picture on the cover of Time. It was of the rivers flowing out of Rwanda, running red every 20 minutes as the Hutus went from village to village slaughtering.

That photograph hit me full force and changed the course of my life. I could not believe that this was happening and nobody was doing anything about it. From that moment on, I could no longer continue what I had been doing, no longer stand on the sidelines This one photograph of Rwanda (and then Gorevitch’s book) eventually set me on a course that took me to Afghanistan after the invasion and finally here to study at the Museum school in my fifties.

Since you spoke I have thought deeply about what you said, and my experience with that one photograph. And I think so much has to do with becoming desensitized. Being bombarded day and night with cable news, endless stories, images, propaganda from all sides that one’s heart closes. We feel inundated and paralyzed by all the suffering and injustice around the world, and here in our own communities and so we close our eyes, thinking to preserve our sanity -  and we loose our humanity in the process.

Because, I think, in fact, that when we are able to truly see, to truly feel something, no matter how horrific, there is a counterintuitive sense of…relief….  I have never been quite able to understand it.

But listening to you, to your infinitely sensitive and care-full approach to your work, I realized what it is. When an image, a word, a work of art, reveals the reality that we actually live with blindly every day, when we can feel it for one moment, we become re-sensitized. And then we do in fact regain our humanity. Without it we are lost.

Your art itself and listening to you talk, your whole approach to making art, gave me one of those moments. You are an inspiration. Thank you.

His beautiful website: alfredojaar.net

An Art21 episode: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/jaar/index.html