pyesenka devich'ya

distant-near:

Jenny Holzer. Lustmord Table, 1994. Human bones, engraved silver, wood table. Installation: Jenny Holzer, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead Quays, United Kingdom, 2010. Text:Lustmord, 1993–95. © 2010 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Photo: Colin Davison.

In an interview with Andrew Graham-Dixon for the culture show in 2010 Jenny Holzer talks about the Lustmord series as one of the most direct and explicit modes of work in her career. She describes how the war crimes committed during the early nineties in ex Yugoslavia compelled her to do so. For the Lustmord table she used actual human bones from anatomist suppliers to ‘construct’ the work. At the outset of this project she describes how she wanted to write about the war from the perspective of a victim, a perpetrator and an observer.

Some of the bones on the table have silver rings around them imprinted with writing. One of the tags reads; “She has three colours in her eyes” to which Jenny Holzer comments; “ I found it most useful to represent things said by people who are no longer capable of saying them….”