Alfredo Jaar

Installed on top of the former distillery of Usina Santa Terezinha, the work reproduces a sentence written by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci while he was imprisoned under Benito Mussolini's fascist regime: “The old world is dying. The new world is slow to be born. In this chiaroscuro, monsters emerge.” By turning a political reflection into an 18-meter illuminated sign, Alfredo Jaar transforms word, light, and architecture into a commentary on times of crisis and transition. At Usina de Arte, the work takes on a particular dimension by occupying a structure tied to the history of the sugar economy of Pernambuco's Zona da Mata. Between the industrial memory of the past and the uncertainties of the future, Jaar's neon acts as a permanent warning about the struggles that mark every change of era.