Muxima, Alfredo Jaar

Exhibition Label: "Echoes of Human Migration in the Collection of the Spencer Museum of Art," Mar-2010 Alfredo Jaar seamlessly weaves a strikingly vivid video montage of social, political, and commercial concerns of post-civil-war Angola with a migratory musical composition that ebbs and flows in relation to the emotional themes. Muxima subtly navigates several complicated issues, including the displacement of war-torn peoples, labor migrations as a result of the oil industry, and the infiltration of HIV and AIDS as the country reopens its doors to trade, commerce, and nations. Exhibition Label: “Conversation I: Place,” Oct-2007, Emily Stamey “I decided to go to Angola based on my collection of African music and not necessarily because of a particular event….About four years ago when I was organizing my collection, I realized that I had six different versions of a song called “Muxima.” As I listened to these different versions, I realized they were recorded at different times in Angolan history. Listening to them, I could practically visualize the recent history of Angola: colonialism, independence, civil war, land mines, AIDS, and so on. I could hear all of these events in the music - through the same song.” - Alfredo Jaar Alfredo Jaar, in conversation with Patricia C. Phillips, “The Aesthetics of Witnessing: A Conversation with Alfredo Jaar,” Art Journal, 64, n.3 (Fall 2005). When contemplating purchase of this video, the Spencer staff watched it numerous times, shared it with colleagues across campus, and had many discussions. Here are just a few of our initial responses to Jaar’s work: “Muxima seems to me to be a seamless whole. It serves as a tone poem, representing all that is human, cultural, political, commercial, and artistic in Angola, and a testimony to how its people are able to live and breathe within that inexorable, cyclical whole….Somewhere I came across this quote: ‘The well-pondered image lingers.’ This film will linger in my mind.” Lee Blackledge, Grant Writer and Editor “You can say things with a series of images and music that you can’t say with a single image. I imagine that how one understands these images and music will be different based on one’s knowledge of Latin America’s connections with Africa.” Sofía Galarza Liu, Collections Manager “To me, the scenes…were emblematic, perhaps allowing us to move from the specificity of the beauties and painful troubles of one place and one population to a more general view of the world and humanity, in their precarious, slipping balance.” Stephen Goddard, Senior Curator and Curator of Prints and Drawings