Lament of the Images

Alfredo Jaar created the light installation “Lament of the Images” for the Stommeln synagogue in 2019, and this book, which includes a text by Bruno Coneo, was published to accompany it.

The Chilean-born, New York-based artist produced the work as a metaphor for society’s inability to see or be moved by images anymore. This death of image, created by the numbing amount of images we’re exposed to, becomes even more urgent because, as Jaar argued, images have never been under such control by authorities like governments and certain parts of private sectors.

The title of the work itself is drawn from a Nigerian author Ben Okri's poem of the same name, in which ritual masks and icons are burned and thereby released of their power.