Realismo de crise: a narrativa de Serra Pelada na obra de Alfredo Jaar

Abstract

The photographic and videographic records produced by Alfredo Jaar in Serra Pelada in 1985 resulted in a series of works, with which the Chilean artist organized a critical body of work that was both diverse and compact on the reality of Brazilian mining, but also on the geopolitical implications surrounding that event. This thesis aims to analyze the propositions of Alfredo Jaar that emerged from the photographic and videographic documentation of Serra Pelada, from the first proposition that consisted of a medium-length video entitled Introduction to a Distant World; later, in a public intervention in the New York subway station Spring Street and entitled Rushes; and finally in the series of photographs that received the common title of Gold in the Mornig. Throughout this paper we are interested in identifying and questioning the iconographic and discursive similarities and differences organized in this body of work produced by Alfredo Jaar in relation to other modes of realist representation of mining and, from a general concept we have named Crisis Realism, we propose discussions about the relation of Jaar's works with the tradition of realism in art and documentarism and seek to evidence in them the critical and ethical order agencyed by the artist in face of the political, economic and ideological aspects that mark the time and the specific context represented by the event of Serra Pelada.