The Chilean-born, New York-based architect and artist Alfredo Jaar is intellectually and emotionally highly political. His works reflect current socio-political conditions. Immigration issues play a role in many of his installations, but he has also artistically addressed ethnic conflicts such as the genocide in Rwanda.
The late curator and former director at Munich’s Haus der Kunst, Okwui Enwezor, wrote of Jaar’s work as “one of the most committed of a contemporary artist”. He openly takes up “the structural connection between ethics and aesthetics, art and politics”..
The fact that Jaar, who has participated in exhibitions worldwide, has taken part in the Biennials in Venice, São Paulo and the Documenta in Kassel several times, is a person who thinks and feels politically, can be clearly felt whenever he talks about his work. This is also the case for his current rotunda project in the Pinakothek der Moderne, which came about at the invitation of the Architekturmuseum. Like the previous ones, it is funded by the pin friends and is accessible free of charge.
Alfredo Jaar’s installation “One Million German Passports” in the rotunda of the Pinakothek der Moderne looks like a monolithic, burgundy red block when viewed from the gallery.
(Photo: Ulrike Myrzik/Architecture Museum of the TUM)
The installation, which occupies the central area of the rotunda, looks like a monolithic, burgundy-red block with a light-colored edge when viewed from above. Only when you approach the more than two meters high, thick-walled glass cube do you recognize the gold-colored imprint and the federal eagle on the individual elements of the block: a huge number of German passports. Of course they are not real – even if the impression is deceptively real.
“One Million German Passports” is the name of Alfredo Jaar’s work, which is intended to remind people that in 2015 the then Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed one million refugees to Germany. Jaar calls it a “generous gesture” that made him cry. What makes him more angry, however, is the fact that about a million people also voted for the AfD in the federal elections that followed.
In his art project, Jaar uses a large number of numbers, some of which are not entirely precise, and exaggerates them symbolically. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) around 890,000 people seeking protection were registered for the first time in 2015. Almost half a million people actually applied for asylum this year. In total, more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers are said to have found protection in Germany in 2015 and 2016.
Developments in Germany, in Europe and around the world show how accurately Jaar takes up current social problems with his work. The number of refugees has continued to rise since 2015, and the hope of being welcomed has dwindled. Many countries in the world, especially Germany, need immigration to compensate for the falling birth rates and the shortage of skilled workers. And the latest figures on the funding of the pension system also do not bode well for the baby boomers who will retire from the labor market in this decade, as well as for everyone else who depends on this pension system.
The artist wants to have a further aspect touched upon with his project “One Million German Passports”. The number of refugees has multiplied as a result of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. He has mixed feelings about the fact that the Ukrainian refugees are being welcomed “with open arms” in Europe.
Thousands of refugees would die trying to escape across the Mediterranean. Many are rejected by countries – especially those with right-wing populist governments – and have to endure for years in refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and other countries under the worst conditions. He sometimes asks himself: “What do these people think?” And means the unequal treatment of refugees from Ukraine and those from other countries. And he continues: “It kills my soul.” At least here it becomes clear how much injustice in this world is shown by this bordeaux-red block behind bulletproof glass.
Alfred Jaar: One Million German Passports, rotunda of the Pinakothek der Moderneuntil August 27th