Home / Quotes / Quote by Alfredo Jaar

Quote by Alfredo Jaar

“I think I'm a journalist in one sense - I want to communicate to people about certain things that are happening around us, around the world, close or far. In order to transform this information into art you have to add poetry. It's essential.”

Quote by Alfredo Jaar

Author

Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean-born artist renowned for his multimedia installations and video art. His works explore themes of memory, history, and human experience, often using public spaces and digital media as platforms for display. more

You May Also Like

“My work is always based on reality. I'm not an artist that creates works of fiction. I'm not an artist who is in my studio inventing things out of my imagination - everything is based on reality, on real facts.”

Real Reality Artist Imagination My Imagination

Author:Alfredo Jaar

“I follow many tragedies around the world. At one point I [will] feel like I've accumulated an enormous amount of information, a critical mass amount of information, and I feel like acting - reacting. My manifesto has always been the same: I cannot act in the world before understanding the world. I will not move a finger. I will not come up with any ideas - nothing - until I actually understand what is happening.”

World Moving Understanding Acting Tragedy

Author:Alfredo Jaar

“Certainly when you do a work for a public space, you lose control.”

Author:Alfredo Jaar

“America is our continent. You feel in the daily language that Americans use the word "America" to erase the rest of the continent from the map. And, of course, the language is clearly a reflection of the geopolitical reality: the domination of the United States over the rest of the continent.”

Reality Language Reflection Domination Erase

Author:Alfredo Jaar

“Nowadays I see my work being used, without my permission, as if it was an attack against the Trump regime. People want to say, "No! That's not my America, not the America I know." I'm honored - it's just not me. But as we were saying before, the artist loses control.”

People Artist Honored

Author:Alfredo Jaar

“I think that all art is socially conscious. There is no alternative. Whatever we produce contains a political and social statement. There's no way to avoid that, unless it is pure decoration. But even pure decoration has also some value because you can read pure decoration as a way to ignore the reality that is around us, saying, "Well, I'm not interested. I just like to paint this wall blue.”

Thinking Art Reality Political Values Wall Conscious Art Is Paint Not Interested Decoration

Author:Alfredo Jaar

“I'm used to working with neglect and misunderstanding, so this has been really challenging. It's a different psychic realm. The Lion did not land easily here.”

Different Challenges Neglect Misunderstanding

Author:Carolee Schneemann

“The one word I hear when people have affairs is that they feel alive. They don't talk about the fact they're having sex. They feel like they are engaged with their life. They describe an experience that beats back the deadness inside, which isn't the fault of the marriage or the partner. It's often the deadness that they have allowed to creep in for years on their own. But by definition, it's a transgressive act. And transgression is a breaking of the rules. And it gives you a sense of ownership and freedom. And ownership and freedom gives you a feeling of aliveness. It's a chain.”

People Giving Feelings Affair Ownership

Author:Esther Perel

“For some people, the experience of sexuality is that they are entirely inside their body, but others feel they have totally transcended the physical boundaries of their body. Transcendence is the ability to no longer feel you are contained within the physical world. For many people, the definition of spiritual is a sense of complete abdication of the self. For some people, it's union with another that transcends the borders between where one stops and where the other person starts and creates a sense of infiniteness and timelessness.”

People World Spiritual Ability Sexuality Boundaries Timelessness

Author:Esther Perel

“One of the most amazing abilities of sexuality is to momentarily transcend the borders of Self into something that is no longer defined by physical property and that is utterly unique. It's really what many call a religious experience.”

Religious Ability Unique Property Sexuality Most Amazing

Author:Esther Perel