Alford Jaar

ALFREDO JAAR – Installation/Ambientacion

The Eyes of Gutete Emerita is a photography exhibit that serves as witness to one woman's suffering in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It leads viewers to question the efficacy of words over photographic images and to consider the ways in which they interact to create meaning outside the boundaries of either medium. When Alfredo Jaar went to Rwanda in August of 1994 he went to the Ntarama Church were 400 Tutsi men, women, and children gathered to escape the killing and were instead brutally slaughtered. Jaar meet a woman by the name Gutete Emerita, a woman who survived seeing her husband and sons murdered and only escaping with her daughter.

Instead of showing images of the bodies that were still rotting in the installation, Jaar decided to describe what happened through text and only showing one photograph, this photograph is of Gutete Emerita's eyes. When we look her eyes, as Jaar induces us to, we almost see ourselves reflected in the very eyes that had witnessed horror and where the very perpetrators of the murders were once reflected. It was as if by witnessing the death of her family, Gutete Emerita had become an eyewitness for the whole of Rwanda. In turn, she also became the eyes of a nation that turned to question those who had betrayed her in her time of need. To look closely at this image of Gutete's eyes