Alfredo Jaar is featured in The 2022 Whitney Biennial. The Biennial has surveyed the landscape of American art, reflecting and shaping the cultural conversation, since 1932.
The eightieth edition of the landmark exhibition is co-curated by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, and Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. Titled Quiet as It’s Kept, the 2022 Biennial features an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group of sixty-three artists and collectives whose dynamic works reflect the challenges, complexities, and possibilities of the American experience today.
In this installation, _06.01.2020 18.39_ (2022), Jaar meditates on the events of June 1, 2020, six days after police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man. One of the many peaceful protests following Floyd's death took place in Washington, DC's Lafayette Square, near the White House. In order to facilitate a photo op for former President Donald Trump raising a Bible in front of St. John's Episcopal Church adjacent to Lafayette Square, US Attorney General William Barr ordered federal forces to clear the area. They subsequently fired on the peaceful protesters with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. They also flew two helicopters so low to the ground that the wind created by their rotors broke tree branches and scattered debris. The militarised use of helicopters has been prohibited by international human-rights law and horrified the artist who, recalling his lived experiences in Pinochet-era Chile, created this work.
