Alfredo Jaar

When Alfredo Jaar arrived in New York from his native Chile in 1981, he was shocked at the pervasiveness of racial inequality in the United States. Using enlarged and fractured newspaper photographs of demonstrations of the 1960s, Jaar presents a frenzied view of the struggle in The Fire Next Time, a title co-opted from James Baldwin’s 1962 novel of the same name. The chaotic stacking of light boxes – each roughly the size of a person or coffin – reflects the turbulence of the 1960s. The precarious balance of the boxes also symbolizes the continued uneasiness of race relations today. The Fire Next Time was last on view in 2005.