TOP SECRET//STLW//HCS/COMINT//ORCON/NOFORN, 2017, is a graphite and watercolour
work on paper by Jenny Holzer, the tenth recipient of Whitechapel Gallery’s Art Icon Award.
In this seductive, unique work, which references the aesthetic of minimalism, Holzer
reproduces a redacted, declassified page from an internal US government report on the
President’s Surveillance Program, which allowed the National Security Agency to monitor
Americans’ international phone calls and emails, and to collect bulk metadata on those
communications.
Holzer’s replication of the source document is invigorated with red pigment that grows
muddy as it runs down the vellum surface. This painterly dialogue between colour, surface,
and texture materialises the quiet violence of bureaucratic censorship and obfuscation. We
are left to fill in the blanks and try to arrive at a moment of clarity, but questions around
secrecy, opacity, protection, and subterfuge remain.
This work was previously displayed in Holzer’s solo exhibition SOFTER: Jenny Holzer at
Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, England, in 2017.
Jenny Holzer (b. 1950) has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public
places and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim
Museums in New York and Bilbao, the Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum of American Art,
and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Her medium, whether a T-shirt, plaque, or LED sign, is writing,
and the public dimension is integral to the work. Starting in the 1970s with her New York
City street posters and continuing through her light projections on landscape and
architecture, her practice has rivalled ignorance and violence with humour and kindness.