The Rwanda Project:

The Eyes of Gutete Emerita

by

Alfredo Jaar

1 million slides, light table, magnifiers, and illuminated wall text.

Design, fabrication and installation of the light table by Mark Baumgartner Studio.

Pictures of the fabrication process In The Studio at the bottom of the page.

Table Size:   217-3/4” W x 143” D x 36” H

                   553.1 cm W x 363.2 cm D x 91.4 cm H

Materials:     Aluminum, MDF, Plexiglas, stainless steel hardware, electronic ballast, fluorescent light bulbs, ventilators

... The next anteroom holds a thin brightly backlit line of text in small type describing Jaar's interview with a survivor of the genocide, a woman who witnessed the death of her husband and sons, then fled with her daughter. "Over a five month period in 1994, more than one million Rwandans, mostly members of the Tutsi minority, were systematically slaughtered as the world closed its eyes to genocide," it begins. The text concludes by emphasizing the strong impression made upon the artist by the eyes of this witness, "the eyes of Guetete Emerita."

Jaar's installation concludes with a Baroque surprise, a vast light table piled high with copies of a single slide taken of this survivor's eyes, and I do mean "piled." It is a snake-like heap some feet high and several feet long, which could conceal a few bodies. ...

Excerpt from alfredo jaar’s rwanda project by Alan Moore

http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/reviews/moore/moore5-21-98.asp

To see a slideshow of the fabrication process In The Studio click on one of the pictures.