Lia Rumma Gallery is pleased to present at booth U46 of Unlimited 2026 The Power of Words (1984/2021) by Alfredo Jaar. This seminal installation, reveals how, at the age of twenty-eight, the artist was already confronting the political stakes of images. The installation introduces themes central to his practice: the ethics of representation, the tension between words and images, and the viewer’s responsibility in the act of seeing. Created soon after Jaar’s arrival in New York in the early 1980s, the work centers on a photograph of a typewriter whose paper and roller have been removed. Through the empty opening, sixteen press photographs of anonymous figures in moments of crisis are projected. By removing the mechanism of writing, Jaar underscores the limits of language and confronts viewers with the ambiguity and ethical weight of images in a media-saturated world.
Alfredo Jaar
ALFREDO JAAR | The Power of Words | Unlimited 2026, Basel
- Artista
- Alfredo Jaar
- Data
- 18 – 21 giugno
- Location
- Unlimited Art Basel
Photo Gallery
L'artista

Alfredo Jaar (b. Santiago, Chile, 1956) is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He is mostly known as an installation artist, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and war. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the




