Hyperallergic
Sensitive to Art & its Discontents
To the horror of those who believe in autonomous personal health decisions for uterus-bearing individuals, the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade this morning, a move foreshadowed by a leaked opinion draft earlier last month. The decision will end federal abortion rights, leaving the legality of the procedure in the hands of state legislatures — some of which already have plans to ban abortions immediately. As the need for reproductive resources grows as a result of the ruling, artist Jenny Holzer has released an evocative NFT (non-fungible token) to raise funds for crucial organizations.
The digital artwork is a screen capture from Tucker Carlson Tonight that captures the vitriolic conservative pundit interviewing a guest, with the chyron spelling out the takeaway: “MAKING AN INFORMED CHOICE REGARDING YOUR OWN BODY SHOULDN’T BE CONTROVERSIAL.” They were talking about vaccine mandates, naturally, because Carlson and all his viewership lack a modicum of irony or empathy — they claim to believe in an individual’s ability to make an informed choice about what happens to their own body, just not in terms of being or remaining pregnant.
Twitter user and ACLU staffer Gillian Branstetter observed a similarity in the phrasing and ironic juxtaposition between the chyron text and the art of Jenny Holzer, whose series of Truisms involve a list of plain-text maxims. Originally presented as a typeset document when Holzer began creating these works in 1977, they nowadays appear as freestanding declarative statements, sometimes rendered in neon, on billboards, or in an array of merchandising formats. Relevant past Truisms include the ubiquitous line “ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE.”
From Twitter’s lips to Holzer’s ears, Jenny Holzer Studio is now presenting a screen cap of Branstetter’s viral tweet as an NFT in order to raise money in support of Planned Parenthood, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and PAI.
“These statements speak to the anxiety, humor, banality, tragedy, and urgency of modern life,” Holzer said in a statement. “Gillian Branstetter was kind to encapsulate the similarities between Carlson’s chyron and mine.”
“We must protect the rights of the individual that protect the health of society,” said Holzer.
Rapper Maykel “Osorbo” Pérez was sentenced to nine years.
On the day of the Supreme Court’s decision to undo 50 years of constitutional rights to abortion, artist Elana Mann’s “protest rattles” feel especially poignant and urgent.
Shows at the Hudson Valley’s Hessel Museum of Art feature artists Dara Birnbaum and Martine Syms, as well as new scholarship on Black melancholia as an artistic and critical practice.
This week, Title IX celebrates 50 years, the trouble with pronouns, a writer’s hilarious response to plagiarism allegations, and much more.
Since antiquity, women’s eyebrows have been sites of intense scrutiny, constantly shifting between trend cycles.
PLEASE SEND TO REAL LIFE: Ray Johnson Photographs reveals the “career in photography” that occupied the artist in the last three years of his life.
A landmark show of 30 artists at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York keeps the category of Asian figuration open-ended.
Hall makes no attempt to entice the viewer to begin looking and to look again, letting her methodical craft compel viewers to reflect upon their experience.
Contemporary Black-Indigenous women artists Rodslen Brown, Joelle Joyner, Moira Pernambuco, Paige Pettibon, Monica Rickert-Bolter, and Storme Webber are featured in this digital exhibition.
In Benglis’s latest works, the forces of gravity that defined her seminal poured latex and polyurethane pieces are traded for luminous bronzes.
A new project by Columbia’s Queer Students of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation explores queer histories that have been suppressed by gentrification and urban development.
The 13-foot sculpture of an elephant, initially created out of discarded sofas, was cast in bronze for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s first public art commission.
Sarah Rose Sharp is a Detroit-based writer, activist, and multimedia artist. She has shown work in New York, Seattle, Columbus and Toledo, OH, and Detroit —… More by Sarah Rose Sharp
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Hyperallergic is a forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking about art in the world today. Founded in 2009, Hyperallergic is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.
