Alfredo Jaar
(Kindness) of (Strangers), 2015

Artist
Alfredo Jaar

Title
(Kindness) of (Strangers)

Year of creation
2015

Technology and dimensions
neon and framed print, format variable

Year of acquisition
2018

Acquisition of the foundation

(Kindness) of (Strangers) , 2015, by Alfredo Jaar (born 1956 Santiago de Chile, lives in New York) shines towards the visitor from afar If you approach the work, you will see numerous, bright neon arrows coming from different directions and seeming to point from bottom to top - or from south to north. Because, as a small, accompanying graphic close to the work reveals, they correspond to the movements of fleeing people towards Europe in 2015. Alfredo Jaar's art has been concerned with the political structures of our world and the associated social structures from the very beginning inequality that also manifests itself geographically. In (Kindness) of (Strangers), the abstract lines of the work of art represent the very real routes that refugees and persecuted people take - in the hope of refuge and "kindness", friendliness, in a foreign country.

The work was exhibited in 2018 as part of the exhibition Hello World. Revision of a collection shown in the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Aktuell – Berlin. Not far away was Siah Armajani's installation Glass Front Porch for Walter Benjamin, 2001, (donated by the artist to the Friends of the National Gallery in 2014), which, among other things, also deals with Walter Benjamin's escape from the National Socialists. Jaar's artistically reduced cartography of the movement expresses the sad omnipresence of persecution and flight and makes it clear, as the artist says: "In this chaotic mapping, we are all strangers in search of kindness."

(Kristina Schrei)