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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Jenny Holzer, Laments: I am a man . . .
Laments: I am a man . . ., by Jenny Holzer, 1987

Jenny Holzer, Artist
Laments: I am a man . . . , 1987

Medium
Electronic LED sign with red and yellow diodes
Dimensions
112 1/2 x 10 x 4 1/2 in. (285.8 x 25.4 x 11.4 cm)
Credit Line
The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica. Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; photography by Brian Forrest

The LED sign is perhaps Jenny Holzer's best-known form for displaying her texts, allowing her to smuggle her urgent and provocative words into unlikely sites such as Times Square. Adapted from commercial use and evocative of the information age's never-ending barrage of opinions, facts, and fictions, the LED employs small luminescent diodes to generate phrases that disappear as quickly as they appear, encouraging active engagement on the part of viewers. This work is from Holzer's Laments series, a set of texts often displayed on both LED signs and stone sarcophagi that revolves around themes of sorrow, pain, power, and destruction. Using the first person, the texts portray selfishness and even violence, but the starting phrase "I am a man" brings to mind the signs held by striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968, also the subject of a work by Glenn Ligon in this exhibition.