A series of photographs produced between 1979-1981 depict billboards emblazoned with Jaar’s question ¿Es usted feliz? (Are you happy?), part of his Studies on Happiness project which he conducted in Santiago as a young artist and architect. The project set out to measure the levels of discontent and misery with the dictatorship amongst the population. Jaar posed the question ‘Are you happy?’ to people in the streets of Santiago and collected their answers in polls, as well as later in interviews which he taped on video. The question itself was deemed innocent in the eyes of the authorities and therefore escaped censorship. Chilean art critic Nelly Richard has termed the period ‘la escena da avanzada’ in which artist groups such as Colectivo Acciones de Arte (C.A.D.A) resisted the regime in artworks which were subtle in their critique and thus could be displayed even within a culture of surveillance. Jaar’s practice can be positioned within a wider context in Santiago in which art was mobilised as a form of resistance, despite how his work went largely unnoticed by contemporaneous artists in the period.

In one iteration of the Studies on Happiness project in the Museo Nacional da Bellas Artes visitors were given mints which they could use to vote as to whether they were happy or unhappy. If they did not want to participate, they could abstain and eat the mint instead. At a time when censorship was at its height, the use of polls was in itself subversive, encouraging voting and free expressions of opinion which were suppressed under authoritarianism. In videos which document responses to ‘Are you happy?’, answers were often restrained by self-censorship, a disturbing testament to a climate of fear.