Language

American artist Jenny Holzer unveiled her latest show at an expansive country house in Oxfordshire—the location of Blenheim Art Foundation. The artist's installation, which extends across the historic site, explores—in gigantic walls of light, stonework, painting and installation—themes of power, conflict, and the aftermath of war. For the Blenheim Palace installation, Holzer partnered with the Not Forgotten Association (NFA), a British charity that serves the needs of wounded, sick and disabled service members of the British military. The NFA have gathered a large archive of first-person testimonials from survivors of war, which Holzer used in the artwork—addressing the ways that an understanding of war can never be separated from lived, personal experience.


To speak of hope, despair must to be on the lips for hope to show its truest strength. But within this, what defines despair depends on the individual, and the depth of hope is dependent on the height and determination of will. 

What defines the future is how we mold it with language, both verbal and visual. This is how life is built, through hopeful depiction and willful doing. It is through the languages of expression that emotion and life take form, where inner doubt can translate outward, finding clarity in images and words: emulsifying facts and desire. 

“The arena of language is universal, transcending political affiliation, religious doctrine and social status.”

It is by way of the creative languages and the fire of emotion that resolve can be found. Here is where stagnation of government and social dogma is subverted, slowing the backward rolling stone. The arena of language is universal, transcending political affiliation, religious doctrine and social status. It goes beyond the physical built word and pierces the ancient self, manifesting its power of communication and deciphering change.