Keep people awake
Jenny Holzer's Street Messages
She went out at night when the streets of Manhattan were empty. In the silence of the metropolis, she put up posters with anonymous texts: short messages denouncing different forms of injustice and social control. ‘I just wanted to keep people awake’, the artist said. Seven or eight years later, she lengthened the texts to 100 words in a new series called Inflammatory Essays, which were also destined for the avenues and squares of New York. ‘Fear is the most elegant weapon’, they announced. What messages would you put up on our empty streets today?
Exhibition of the Collection
