Unveiled this week at Goodman Gallery is the first major UK exhibition of the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar. The focus of 25 Years Later is the images Jaar took in August 1994 when he travelled to Rwanda in the aftermath of one of the most violent conflicts in recent history. His Rwanda project is the artist’s attempt to make sense of such devastation and human destruction. It is also an exploration of the human urge to understand and to empathize, and the shortcomings of art in dealing with the unbearable pain of loss and death. This is particularly poignant in Jaar’s encounters with children who have been orphaned in the massacre, many of whom witnessed their parent’s murders. In Embrace, a short film included in the exhibition, two children comfort each other, as if shielding each other from something they witness outside of the frame and our view.
