Alfredo Jaar Chilean, b. 1956
Happy Birthday!, 1998
Pigment print
58.4 x 43.2 cm
23 x 17 in
23 x 17 in
Edition 1 of 3 + 2 AP
Further images
Jaar is attentive to how media impacts public consciousness. There is an evident irony to the selection of an issue of the French newspaper Libération on 26th November 1998 which...
Jaar is attentive to how media impacts public consciousness. There is an evident irony to the selection of an issue of the French newspaper Libération on 26th November 1998 which paired the wishes for a ‘Happy Birthday’ with a photograph of an elderly General Augusto Pinochet. On the same day as his 83rd Birthday on 25th November 1998, the House of Lords rejected Pinochet’s request for diplomatic immunity. He had been indicted for human rights violations in Chile by a Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzón in October and was subsequently arrested in London. When he was later authorised to return to Chile in 2000, he was charged with multiple crimes against humanity, such as the widespread kidnapping during the dictatorship, by Chilean judge Juan Guzmán Tapia. However, on his death in 2006, many cases which aimed to bring Pinochet to justice remained unresolved.
Provenance
Direct from artist's studioExhibitions
Alfredo Jaar: The Way It Is. An Aesthetics of Resistance. NGBK, Berlinische Galerie & Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 2012Publications
Alfredo Jaar: The way it is. An Aesthetics of Resistance. Exhibition catalogue. Berlin: Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (NGBK), 2012.18
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