Jenny Holzer: J’ai vu

For "J’ai vu", a museum-wide project conceived with and for the Musée d’Orsay, Jenny Holzer draws on texts from the museum’s archives and material relating to the period represented in its collections. The project brings language into the museum and its surroundings through projections, monumental installations, stone sculptures and illuminated displays.

The project begins with light projections on the museum’s historic façade along the Seine. Texts selected by Holzer from artists’ letters held in the archives, as well as contemporary literary and political sources, transform the exterior of the building.

Inside, a site-specific LED installation presents streams of coloured text drawn from and responding to the history represented in the collections. Its programming reflects the building’s transformation from a 19th-century railway station into a museum and responds to the movement of visitors through the space.

The LED is presented alongside selected works in the galleries devoted to History Painting, Naturalism and Symbolism, as well as Holzer’s paintings incorporating gold, platinum and palladium leaf, in which sections of text are obscured. The project also includes stone benches created by Holzer and installed throughout the museum, some carved with texts relating to the period 1848–1914.

Together, these works connect historical material with contemporary artistic practice and explore the relationship between language, memory and the museum’s collections.