The entrance to Jenny Holzer’s exhibition at the Whitney, Protect Protect, warns visitors that the artwork inside may cause seizures and dizziness, among other ailments. The museum is concerned with the moving text displayed by the softly glowing LEDs in the dimly lit galleries, when they should be worried about the content of the phrases and texts Holzer imposes on the viewer. The exhibition opens with a series of elongated LEDs on the floor, conveying vertical text that glides towards the viewer letter-by-letter (imagine standing in place, but feeling like you’re crawling down a multilane highway).
The other LED pieces are mostly variations of the same theme, leading across the walls of several gallery spaces, and in one case, tiered across a narrow hallway. The second part of the show features enlarged copies of declassified U.S. government documents from the war in Iraq. These documents, with requisite sections blacked-out, detail the treatment of prisoners, proper interrogation techniques, and accounts from soldiers of possible U.S. military transgressions.
The Whitney’s literature claims that the subtitle of the exhibition comes from these documents, but it is difficult not to see the LED works as a continuation of the same theme. Initially, the sarcastic words and phrases that Holzer displays across these marquees seem benign; when grouped with the declassified documents, however, they induce an air of fearfulness and even distress. Humor is replaced by caution, and gradually, awareness. This awareness inspires the subtitle, as visitors can now protect themselves from what Holzer sees as society’s shortcomings. The media coverage of the war can be seen in this light. This demoralizing coverage is intended to “protect†the public by exposing the mistakes and failures of their government.
The second “protect†in the subtitle perhaps refers to Holzer herself. As she imparts the viewer with an amalgamation of her own words and the words of others, she creates a shield of detachment with which to isolate herself, especially from the culture in which her audience is a member.
Jenny Holzer: Protect Protect, on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from March 12 – May 31, 2009.
Images: Whitney Museum of American Art
thats great. i could use such a display in my new apt.
only maybe it could be more like a less depressing ticker of the foreign markets. somewhere with an up econ.