Alfredo Jaar installs millions of passports in Germany

New York-based Chilean artist and architect's exhibition of one million German passports behind a high-security glass wall is a commentary on current debates over immigration and naturalization in Germany and beyond amid humanitarian crises, including war in Ukraine and migration policies.

The number of passports refers to the number of people who were welcomed into the country in 2015 by Chancellor Angela Merkel; as well as the number of people who voted against Merkel, in the right-wing AFD party. The work is dedicated to the late curator Okwui Enwezor, who once wrote that Jaar's work “represents one of the most developed commitments by a contemporary artist in the blatant embrace of the structural link between ethics and aesthetics, art and politics.”