Human misery is his profession. For his art, Alfredo Jaar goes where it hurts: gold mines, toxic waste dumps, genocide sites. Since the early 1980s, he has used interventions, photographs and films to confront the public with often suppressed social catastrophes, political failure and media representation. With his conceptual, mostly installation-based works, Jaar is considered a pioneer in criticising Western ignorance and the manipulative flood of images.

The veins of our globalized lives are made from precious metals and minerals. Cobalt is what allows our emojis to be delivered to our family WhatsApp group. Copper keeps Teslas on the road and germanium keeps satellites in the sky. Tin is used to make solder, which conducts electricity. We need platinum to produce much-desired clean hydrogen, for electronics and semiconductors. Manganese is vital for rechargeable batteries, as are lithium and nickel. As digitalization progresses and with the energy revolution underway, demand will only rise. (...) These materials appear innocent in the form of a sculpture, yet nevertheless, they almost invisibly determine destinies around the world. Politicians say that we are doomed if we fail to extract these natural resources. But many individuals who live in the places where these coveted resources lie dormant in the ground are already losing out.