Alfredo Jaar — a Chilean born artist, architect and filmmaker who lives and works in New York — talks about the power of art to reveal social injustice and inspire public action. He has a specific mission of engaging communities in dialogue. He combines imagery with performance art in the form of public interventions, which confront many terrible events happening around the world. His projects challenge critical issues that the international community neglects to acknowledge such as genocide, displacement, poverty and violence.

Jaar's projects have taken him to locations all over the globe and his installations are the outcome of thorough research and interaction with the indigenous people of those regions. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He recently completed two important permanent public commissions, The Geometry of Conscience, a memorial located next to the just opened Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago de Chile, and Park of the Laments, a memorial park within a park sited next to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and a MacArthur Fellow in 2000.