Inferno & Paradiso by Alfredo Jaar at Photo Elysée

Inferno & Paradiso is an immersive slide-projection exhibition created by Alfredo Jaar, one of the most socially active artists of our day.

Overview

For this show, Jaar selected 20 contemporary press photographers and asked each of them to choose two images from their archives – the most painful one they had taken and the most hopeful one.

Like Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Jaar takes us on a journey through heaven and hell, exploring how the onslaught of images of human suffering is dulling our sensitivity.

Inferno & Paradiso presents 40 photographs taken by 20 press photographers selected by Jaar for their ability to distill the complexity of humankind in the modern era. From Ukraine to Argentina, Gaza to New York, and the Congo to the Philippines, the photographers document many of the crises afflicting our society; but they also capture the joy and happiness inherent in our world. It is that dichotomy – a world caught between heaven and hell – that underpins this project.

Exhibition visitors enter a darkened room where the images are projected in 20-minute cycles: all the images relating to heaven are projected simultaneously, and then all the images relating to hell are shown. Visitors are thus swept up in each of the two themes for 20 minutes at a time.

Inferno & Paradiso is an immersive experience that confronts visitors with the emotions elicited by images of joy and pain. It embodies Jaar’s contention that photography has not lost its impact in today’s image-saturated society.

This exhibition, first shown in Cortona in 2025, attests to the breadth of Jaar’s artistic practice and his penchant for interrogating the power dynamics and social and political schisms brought about by capitalism and globalization. It delivers an exacting and piercing look at the role of photography and the media in contemporary society – and at the responsibility held by those pulling the levers.

The exhibition was co-produced with the nonprofit On The Move for the Cortona On The Move international photography festival.

About The Artist

Alfredo Jaar (b. 1956) is a Chilean artist, architect and filmmaker who now lives and works in Lisbon after spending over 40 years in New York. He is considered one of our era’s most culturally, politically and socially committed artists. In 1994, he traveled to Rwanda to witness the genocide firsthand – an experience that radically changed his life and his artistic practice.

Jaar has exhibited around the world, including at the Venice Biennale (1986, 2007, 2009 and 2013), at documenta in Kassel (1987 and 2002) and at the Rencontres d’Arles (2013). He has been the subject of over 80 solo shows, including at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts (MCBA) in Lausanne in 2007. Jaar won the Hasselblad Award in 2020, the IV Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus in 2024 and the Prix Pictet in 2025.

His works are held in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tate Modern in London; the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid; the Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI) and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MARCO) in Rome; the MCBA in Lausanne; and numerous other museums and private collections around the world.