On Wednesday night I was lucky enough to go to the Seattle Art Museum for a talk with one of my favorite artists, Jenny Holzer. Jenny is a conceptual artist who uses language as her medium, and in general, I’m a huge fan of artists who incorporate words into their work. Maybe it’s the writer in me.
Jenny’s installations have been presented in all kinds of formats. TORTURE IS BARBARIC, part of her Truisms series shown above, was delivered through an LED display in Times Square. She’s worked with posters, traditional plaques, marble benches, projections onto sides of buildings, and even human bones.
She’s taken essays and books and condensed them to one sentence (Truisms) or 100 words in 20 lines (Inflammatory Essays) and used official declassified National Security Archives to create a series of silkscreened paintings.
She creates various concoctions of form and content. Often times she’ll create tension by presenting many conflicting statements in one room or display shocking, sometimes horrible, words on contrasting bright pop colored paper. She’ll use a traditional form that you’d expect to say something boring* or historical* (*opinion of the author) that upon closer inspection shows us something completely unexpected.
She thinks about the differences in perception of the content based on the form itself. How would these words feel if you read them while holding something in your hand, if you saw them presented on a stone slab, or if they were flashing by in bright red lights?
In Lustmord, where Jenny explored violent war crimes against women in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, she displayed photographs of text from three different viewpoints (survivor, observer, perpetrator) on human skin. Some of the ink used in this series included blood that was donated from women who lived in that area.
If you’re interested in seeing and hearing more about Jenny’s work, check out the Art21 video below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxrxnPLmqEs&w=640&h=360]
I am so grateful to have been able to learn more about Jenny Holzer’s work from the artist herself. I think it’s time to add “Collaborate with Jenny Holzer” to my Life List.
Have a great weekend! xoxo
View Jenny Holzer’s work at SAM Downtown, part of the Elles: SAM exhibition which brings together exceptional loans and stunning treasures from SAM’s collection (including works never seen in the Northwest) and highlights some of the inspired, and hard-fought, achievements of 20th and 21st century women artists.