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Jenny Holzer

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Jenny Holzer

(Born 1950, works in Hoosick, NY)

Wanås Wall, 2002

260 inscriptions in 1,800-meter-long dry-stone wall

With support from Stiftelsen Kulturbro

Language has been central to Jenny Holzer’s oeuvre since the late 1970s. She works with text series that are often featured in places where commercially- or politically-charged language is expected: on posters, electronic signs, building façades, or receipts. When she visited Wanås, she was fascinated by the dry-stone walls, a historical relic that tells of the labors of times past. She had stonemasons from the area sandblast four of her existing series of text into select stones in the stone wall that surrounds the park. Altogether, there are 260 texts in the 1.8 km-long wall. The artwork begins with Truisms (1977–1979), Holzer’s first text series. It is comprised of short messages inspired by a variety of value systems and political perspectives. Then follows texts from Erlauf (1995), which is based on the horrors of the Second World War, and thereafter, the more poetic Arno (1996) and Survival (1983–1985), which deal with everyday life and its challenges.