Jenny Holzer | Laments

Jenny Holzer

Laments 

New York City, USA: Dia Art Foundation, 1989

58 pp., 19.5 x 11.3 cm., softcover book with VHS tape

Edition of 2500

"This installation I wound up being entirely about death and dying. It was, I suppose, triggered in part because of the AIDS epidemic. It probably also had something to do with my just having a baby and suddenly being very worried about anything that could hurt her. I was spending all my time trying to keep her well, so I suppose I was extra sensitive to any external threats to her well being, and then I suppose the other part of it was my ongoing worries and thoughts about the results of bad politics, how that people may or may not be interested in your well being, and the possibilities of death from that.

So, what I did, I wrote 13 texts that were the Laments, or the last remarks, of people who had

died. It was as if the people could have one last say about what was important to them or what

they should have done, or what could have happened, and again I used the combination of stone

and electronics. There, the sarcophagi. There was one text per sarcophagi, and one per sign, so there was a one-to-one correspondence between the text that would rise from the floor and go up, and the ones that would just lie there. That’s a little better shot of what the room looked like. As a whole, it was a wonderful space to work in. It was a space that in a way was very easy because it was such a simple, clean space. It almost told me what to do, the same way that eventually, this museum told me what to do.”

- Jenny Holzer, 1990