Constructing American Identity Montclair Visit

Diana Diaz

Colloquium ACM

February 22nd, 2019

Visit to Montclair Art Museum

Constructing American Identity Exhibit at the Montclair Museum

Repair, 2017 by Kevan Lunney:

This artwork was the first one to catch my attention the most. It is constructing an identity around what it is to try and find yourself. As per Kevan Lunney, “Repair” explains how “we all go through a journey to find wholeness, from chaos to connection”. The materials used in the artwork are aluminum, glass, neon light, industrial wool felt, knitted construction. It shows two different materials creating a fabric between strength and integrity. A simple knotted construction is a simple interlocking loops which depends on one another to be strong and united. 

The piece leans toward what we as people become when we have integrity, work with each other and have the strength to do so. It also speaks about how “the weaknesses or detachments in our bodies are repaired by blood flow and the creation of new tissue” comparing this thought to how families, communities and the larger world, breaks are repaired with communication, compassion, and patience. It shows how lights can repair a lost connection amongst ourselves and the rest of the world. This artwork inspires connectedness and it shows through a simple visual and physical image how we should as a society work. When integrity and strength are compromised, we become apart from each other and from ourselves. We become a single entity in a world where we don’t live alone.

Green Survival, 2003 by Jenny Holzer:

Artwork created by Jenny Holzer on 2003. Green survival is a LED sign displays technology artwork inspired by the train stations and tickers LED Lights. Holzer described her work as “needing to be where people look.” Her intent with her work was to show evoking nuances of meaning from seemingly matter-off-face, anonymous statements. She programmed the artwork to run at varying speeds and different typefaces and patterns. In most of her works, Jenny tries to reclaim public space and harnessing the tropes of modern advertising media. Her messages, sometimes her own other times written by notable figures, address issues of feminism, gender, AIDS, the environment, class and family structures, war, and the nature of power. This artwork is from her Survival series from the 1980s. Holzer tries to construct identity by outing thoughts of herself and others. Since her earlier artworks, Jenny Holzer has a specific way of showing what’s on her mind. 

She has constructed her own identity as an artist by always showing people’s thoughts, including her own. Through her own and other’s life experiences, relationships and connections she has been able to portray in the way she knows best her own identity. Jenny uses other people’s experience also to explain herself and her own thoughts. Holzer involves metaphors or straight forward messages. She represents her thoughts and emotions in a visual and conceptual representation through lights, sentences and an in your face manner.