The Power of Words

WORDS AS TALL AS BUILDINGS: artist Jenny Holzer projects her “truisms” onto surfaces as disparate as corporate headquarters and natural lakes, amplifying the words and making them virtually unavoidable.

Holzer is a social justice-minded artist. In a world dominated by advertising slogans and corporate-controlled media, she uses the “billboard” approach to provoke thought. She’s used everything from poetry to declassified military documents in her site-specific works.

Her latest commission, “For Portland,” was held in December at the Portland Museum of Art. The work celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Nelson Social Justice Fund. For the text, Holzer chose the poetry of Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska.

Here’s a sample of Szymborska’s poetry, from “The Turn of the Century”:

Already too much has happened
that was not supposed to happen.
What was to come about
has not.

Spring was to be on its way,
and happiness, among other things.

Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys.
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie.
Certain misfortunes
were never to happen again
such as war and hunger and so forth.

Read more of Szymborska’s poetry here. More of Jenny Holzer’s projections, arranged by city, at her official website.