Whitney Biennial 2022: 
Quiet as It’s Kept

Floor 6

Born 1956 in Santiago, Chile
Lives in New York, NY

In this installation Alfredo Jaar meditates on the events of June 1, 2020, six days after police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man. One of the many peaceful protests following Floyd’s death took place in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square, near the White House. In order to facilitate a photo op for former President Donald Trump raising a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church adjacent to Lafayette Square, U.S. Attorney General William Barr ordered federal forces to clear the area. They subsequently fired on the peaceful protestors with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. They also flew two helicopters so low to the ground that the wind created by their rotors broke tree branches and scattered debris. The militarized use of helicopters has been prohibited by international human-rights law and horrified Jaar: “When, starting at 6:39 pm, authorities set off a series of explosions in the middle of the crowd in Lafayette Square, I thought about my own experience in Pinochet’s Chile. A few hours later, I watched with horror the arrival of the helicopters. That is when I realized that I was witnessing fascism. Fascism had arrived in the USA.”