American artist Jenny Holzer gains her reputation largely for her text-based installations, upon which she applies words as a representation of the ever-flowing information in our time. Between the virtual and solid Holzer utilizes the contrast as an allusion to the capitalist establishment. While the contemporary reality is being alienated by the overloaded information, Holzer turns it into weapons to fight back.

In the exhibition Artist Rooms: Jenny Holzer at Tate Modern, the entrance room is covered by her piece Truisms (1977-79), composed by aphorisms and slogans about ideologies and common truths. Before Tate, this purely text-based work was applied upon various mediums from condoms, t-shirts to stone benches and a billboard at Time Square in 1982. The dissemination to a certain extent renders itself ironic, as public contact of the written could vary from an artistic encounter or commercial exposure. The process of public approaching it is already to indicate the crowded reality, where one is ossified into receiver of excessive information.

Figure 1: Gu, F. (2019) Truisms [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Figure 2: Hems, J. (2018) Exhibition View: ARTISTS ROOMS: Jenny Holzer [photograph].

Figure 3: Marchael, J. (1985) from Survival (1983-1985) [photograph].

The use of LED in Blue Purple Tilt (2007), Floor (2015) and They Left Me (2018), as a symbolic method of Holzer, further clarifies her argument of how we position ourselves and communicate under the capitalist hierarchy, in both a commercial and political context. Holzer programmed texts from her previous writing like Truisms and Inflammatory Essays, a series of interviews of Syrian refugees by Save the Children and Human Rights Watch, and poetry of Anna Świrszczyńska concerning the second world war. While incorporating the personal archive and historical accounts, Holzer projects them via one of the most recognized medium of commercialization. In a way, messages of the suffering are being distributed as an advertisement, behind which lies the ever-going profit-seeking that could directly or indirectly intensify the warfare or any inhuman treatments.

Figure 4: Hems, J. (2018) Exhibition View: ARTISTS ROOMS: Jenny Holzer [photograph].

Figure 5: Gu, F. (2019) Floor [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Figure 6: Gu. F. (2019) They Left Me [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Such irony seems more evident in I’ve Just Been Shot (2017) and Protect Protect (2007), where Holzer utilizes the leftover of the war – a military sleeping bag and labelled maps of American military intervention in the Middle East. Placed alongside the advertising flashes, the brutality documented within these objects seem to be rendered negligible.

Figure 7: Gu, F. (2019) I’ve Just Been Shot [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Figure 8: Gu, F. (2019) Protect Protect [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Reference:

Gu, F. (2019) Floor [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Gu, F. (2019) I’ve Just Been Shot [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Gu, F. (2019) Protect Protect [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Gu. F. (2019) They Left Me [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Gu, F. (2019) Truisms [photograph]. Tate Modern, London.

Hems, J. (2018) Exhibition View: ARTISTS ROOMS: Jenny Holzer [photograph]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/artist-rooms-jenny-holzer/exhibition-guide (Accessed: 14 May 2019).

Hems, J. (2018) Exhibition View: ARTISTS ROOMS: Jenny Holzer [photograph]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/artist-rooms-jenny-holzer/exhibition-guide (Accessed: 14 May 2019).

Marchael, J. (1985) from Survival (1983-1985) [photograph]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jenny-holzer-1307/5-ways-jenny-holzer-brought-art-streets (Accessed: 16 May 2019).