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How did Alfredo Jaar's This Is Not America challenge the use of the word America?

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Diego Rivera: Popular History of Mexico — Latin American art Detail from *Popular History of Mexico*, mosaic mural by Diego Rivera, 1953; on the Teatro des los Insurgentes, Mexico City.

In his 1987 installation This Is Not America (A Logo for America), Chilean-born artist Alfredo Jaar challenged the common practice of using the word "America" to refer exclusively to the United States.12

Displayed on a light board in Times Square, the work featured a sequence of projections that systematically critiqued this linguistic convention. Jaar projected an outline of the United States accompanied by the words "This Is Not America," followed by the same text over an image of the U.S. flag. Finally, he projected the word "America" across a map encompassing the entire Western Hemisphere, including North, Central, and South America.12

By juxtaposing these images, Jaar highlighted that geographic boundaries are often arbitrary divisions used to reinforce power dynamics. His work asserts that the term "America" properly encompasses the Americas as a whole, rather than being synonymous with a single nation.12