Alfredo Jaar at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents a major solo exhibition by pioneering Chilean artist, Alfredo Jaar, from October 14, 2017 to April 8, 2018. This important project is a key part of YSP's 40th anniversary celebrations taking place throughout 2017. Widely regarded as one of the world's most politically engaging yet poetic artists, Jaar addresses humanitarian trauma and the politics of image-making, creating visually and emotionally stunning works that have an exceptional aesthetic. The exhibition includes a major new commission, The Garden of Good and Evil (2017), presented in the open air and visible through the glass façade of the gallery. On entering what appears to be a beautiful grove of trees, visitors experience elegantly fabricated steel cells, which reference 'black sites', the secret detention facilities operated by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) around the world. Carefully chosen to enhance YSP's landscape, many of the trees will be planted into the Park as a nurturing legacy of the project once the exhibition closes. A work that Jaar has wanted to realize for some years and that YSP is uniquely placed to create, The Garden of Good and Evil is a significant temporary commission for YSP and for the UK. Powerful mixed media installations transform the award-winning Underground Gallery, taking visitors on a personal and sensory journey. The first space features The Sound of Silence (2005), a work that exposes the history of a devastating image of a young victim of the 1993 Sudanese famine, taken by photographer Kevin Carter. In the second space, contemplating the problem of compassion fatigue, A Hundred Times Nguyen (1994) comprises 100 images of a little girl the artist met while visiting 'refugee detention centres' in Hong Kong in 1991. Shadows (2014) presents six images taken by photographer Koen Wessing over a single day, early in the 1978 Nicaraguan Civil War, following a farmer's murder. Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is the leading international centre for modern and contemporary sculpture which celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2017. It is an independent charitable trust situated in the 500-acre, 18th-century Bretton Hall estate in West Yorkshire. Founded in 1977 by Executive Director Peter Murray, YSP was the first sculpture park in the UK, and is the largest of its kind in Europe, providing the only place in Europe to see Barbara Hepworth's The Family of Man in its entirety alongside a significant collection of sculpture, including bronzes by Henry Moore and site-specific works by Andy Goldsworthy, David Nash and James Turrell.