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Alfredo Jaar

Decolonial Time and the Aesthetics of the Unfinished

Cover of Alfredo Jaar is white with black tree branches in the foreground. A silver cage sits amidst the white ground in a grey circle.

Book

Pages: 282

Illustrations: 88 illustrations, incl. 31 in color

Release Date: July 14, 2026

Author: Florencia San Martín

Foreword by: Wolfgang Kaleck

Contributor: Wolfgang Kaleck

In Alfredo Jaar, Florencia San Martín analyzes the work of the prominent Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar, whose work challenges the linear and triumphalist temporality of Western modernity, which obscures the violence of colonization and globalization. San Martín argues that Jaar’s work represents decolonial time, exposing the limits of the violent systems we oppose but inhabit. His art, she maintains, is informed by and responds to two interconnected historical events relevant to his own life: the US-backed military coup that established Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, and the implementation of its corollary neoliberal economic system around the world. San Martín explores the key themes in Jaar’s artistic practice—mourning, accountability, and failure—which situate the victims of the Chilean regime in a global context, directly confront the architects of atrocity, and question how ideas of diversity and inclusion have been co-opted by modern neoliberal discourses. Alfredo Jaar enables us to reimagine art history, offering a fresh paradigm from where to think about global contemporary art today.

Praise

“It is rare that an artist whose work is deeply committed to socio-political issues receives detailed attention to that element rather than glancing references to alert the viewer. Alfredo Jaar is not only a globally important visual artist but a savvy and brilliant commentator/participant in the content at the heart of his work. In this book—as potentially groundbreaking as Jaar’s art—Florencia San Martín offers a dense, detailed, and intelligent analysis of the art and its crucial political contexts, opening up Jaar’s visual oeuvre to its real significance in and beyond the world of art.” - Lucy R. Lippard, writer, art critic, activist, and curator

“Florencia San Martín provides a compelling argument for Alfredo Jaar as a powerful guide through the practices of decolonial art made within today’s repressive neoliberal regimes. Grounded in over a decade of interviews with one of the leading voices in contemporary art, this study envelopes the reader in Jaar’s urgent questions about social justice and state violence, migration and exile, happiness and loss.” - Esther Gabara, author of Non-literary Fiction: Art of the Americas Under Neoliberalism

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Author/Editor Bios

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Florencia San Martín is Assistant Professor of Art History at Lehigh University.

Wolfgang Kaleck is the founder as well as general secretary for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.

Table Of Contents

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List of Illustrations  ix
Foreword: Vivimos Adentro, Pero en Contra / Wolfgang Kaleck  xiii
Introduction. Decolonial Time and the Aesthetics of the Unfinished  1
1. Mourning  46
2. Accountability  88
3. Failure  136
Conclusion. The End of the World  172
Acknowledgments  197
Notes  203
Bibliography  231
Index
 

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3878-8 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3390-5 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6241-7 /