Today it is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day and, to mark this celebration, Hauser & Wirth collaborated with artist Jenny Holzer for a limited edition (100 samples) benefit prints featuring the artist's iconic slogan "All Things Are Delicately Interconnected".
Part of her earliest "Truisms" series (1977-79, comprising around 300 phrases), this particular line of text has been printed by the artist on posters wheat-pasted throughout New York City, but also emblazoned on T-shirts, carved in stone and reproduced on an electronic LED signboard above Times Square.
The conceptual artist, the first woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1990 (winning the Golden Lion for Best Pavilion), has often comprised in her pieces text-based works inspired by the rhetoric of advertising.
The truism is simple yet incredibly powerful, it hints indeed at the fact that an action affects another and that we can't think of ourselves as detached from our fellow human beings.
As everything and everyone is interconnected an action and a decision in one country may have repercussions in another. The truism is particularly apt for the times we are living in: there is a continuing climate crisis while the current COVID-19 pandemic, while isolating us in our houses, has dramatically reunited us in the same destiny.
Holzer's print was created by Powerhouse Arts, a not-for-profit based in Gowanus and Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Powerhouse Arts printmaker Leslie Diuguid created the print from her home studio, Du-Good Press, during this period of lockdown.
Part of Hauser & Wirth’s #artforbetter initiative, all the sales proceeds from this print will be split between the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization and the initiative Art for Acres (an initiative for artists, gallerists and collectors with a mission to support large-scale land conservation that has worked with a range of renowned contemporary artists to date, among them also Mika Rottenberg).
Holzer's print follows a sort of arty tradition for Earth Day 2020, combining printmaking and environmental activism. It was indeed Robert Rauschenberg who created the first graphic image in 1970 to support the first national awareness campaign for Earth Day in the United States.
The truism "All Things Are Delicately Interconnected" is indirectly highlighted also in a video by Aiden Zamiri featuring model and activist Kai-Isaiah Jamal reciting a poem about climate change. The video announces the partnership between fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and not-for-profit organization Canopy.
Canopy secures large-scale forest conservation and works with different businesses to transform unsustainable forest product supply chains. So far it has worked with H&M, Penguin-Random House, Stella McCartney, Target, UNIQLO/Fast Retailing, Zara/Inditex and many other well-known brands. The organisation is currently working with Westwood who has committed to ensuring that none of its viscose fabrics originate from the world ancient and endangered forests, 100% of its wood pulp derived fabrics being FSC certified by 2021, and will prioritize Next Generation viscose as it becomes available.
The video is a collage in movement in which images of trees and luscious forests are juxtaposed to houses being built, urban views, cars and roads and the poem focuses very much on the consequentiality of specific actions and the destructive link between ancient forests and the fashion we consume. Jamal mentions the act of putting on a plain black T-shirt, forgetting that in this basic garment "lay the substances of ancient forests that no longer exist".
You can watch (and share) the video on YouTube or on the Canopy site and sign here the organisation's petition to ask the G20 world leaders to rebuild our economies in a more sustainable way.
Image credits for this post:
Images 1 to 4 courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Jenny Holzer, from "Truisms" (1977–79), 1986. Installation view at Other Words, Dupont Circle, Washington, DC, 1986. © 1986 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jenny Holzer, from "Truisms" (1977–79), 2017. Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama, Japan, 2017 © 2017 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Leslie Diuguid working on the print "All Things Are Delicately Interconnected" from her home studio in Brookyln, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Jenny Holzer delicately interconnected 2020 Screenprint on Coventry Rag 335 gsm, acrylic pewter ink, palladium leaf sized with enamel ink Ed. of 100, 45.7 x 55.9 cm / 18 x 22 in © 2020 Jenny Holzer ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020
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