Alfredo Jarr: This is Not America

Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar has caused controversy in the past with his project titled A Logo For America which originally appeared on a billboard in Times Square in the 1980s, and now it has appeared in London where it was emblazoned across the screens of Piccadilly Circus. Jaar’s work declares the words ‘This Is Not America’ across an outline of the United States and is the antithesis to Piccadilly Circus’s ad-laden billboards (frequently from companies born across the pond). It was in the Eighties and remains today a call-to-action to reclaim the term ‘America’ for the entire continent in all its diversity and vastness, an outcry against the fact that the USA claims the term for itself alone. This is a contentious issue that often outrages Latinos, with good reason – it is one of the most obvious symptoms of the USA’s latent ethnocentrism and dismissal of its southern neighbours.

by Aphra Evans

Jaar is an artist whose work has spanned the world over and yet retains an element of consistency; that element is his restless, relentless exposure of human injustices. From the nuclear disaster in Fukushima to the issue of homelessness in Montréal, the intention behind Jaar’s installations is always a carefully considered attempt to highlight social wrongs – and in the process help to right them.

As the Guardian has rightly pointed out, this work could not have come at a better time as political bigotry is pushed further and further into the nation’s limelight by Mr Donald Trump. It is times like these where powerful messages like Jaar’s resonate even more deeply.

Born in Chile and now living in New York, he recently spoke at The Royal Institution in London where it became clear that his projects have touched people across the globe. In Dallas, Texas, he offered the new-born children of ethnic minorities free lifelong memberships to the prestigious sculpture museum there, a place until then frequented exclusively by the white middle class. In Skoghall, Sweden, a satellite town built around a paper factory, he built a paper museum that stood erect for one day before being burnt to the ground, in the hope of accentuating the total lack of local cultural spaces. Let us only hope that A Logo For America went some way to foster solidarity with the Latin American people on this side of the Atlantic, as we await November's election results.

The A Logo For America project is part of Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today currently on show at the South London Gallery (SLG) until 4 September 2016. The exhibition premiered at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in June 2014 and was then shown at Museo Jumex, Mexico City. This is its only showing outside of the Americas.

Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today on view until 11 September

VENUE: South London Gallery
LOCATION: 65-67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH
DATES: 10 June –11 September 2016
WEBSITE: southlondongallery.org