Muxima, archival copy, Alfredo Jaar

Episode 131 Dec-2007, Emily Stamey I'm David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. The music you hear in the background is a West African folksong called Muxima, which is also the title of a 2005 film in the Spencer collection for which this and six other versions of the song provide the soundtrack. Muxima means "heart" in Kimbundu, the indigenous language of Angola. In the film, Chilean-born New York based- artist Alfredo Jaar weaves together images that offer a poetic portrait of this country. Jaar says that his artistic mission is to bring news of the "real world" to the "art world." In Muxima, Jaar illustrates the disparity between Angola's national oil wealth and its impoverished citizens; reveals remnants of the country's Portuguese colonial past and long civil war; and documents its current efforts to cope with an AIDS epidemic. The topics are grave, and Jaar has described the film as a lament, but in the beauty of his images and the music that accompanies them, there is also an element of hope. With thanks to Emily Stamey for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I'm David Cateforis.