© Jenny Holzer / BONO. Photo: © Ivar Kvaal
Cliff Sappho
- Date 2013
- Unveiled 2013
- Material Stone carvings
- Dimensions Varierende
«I'd like to explore the centuries of man on the site that one read the history on its surface, with language becoming part of the park´s skin.»
Photo: © Nanda Lanfranco
Jenny Holzer
(b. Gallipolis, United States, 1950)
Jenny Holzer is a conceptual artist working with text in public spaces. She studied art at Duke University, University of Chicago, Ohio University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Language has been central to her work since the end of the 1970s, her breakthrough came with the series Truisms (1977–1979), with works consisting of short sentences and expressions that were well known and often with an existential and cliché-ridden content. They were placed anonymously around Manhattan, in areas where a commercial or politically charged language was commonplace: on posters, electronic signs, facades, or receipts. She has since installed her textual art all over the world, often as an ongoing display of electronic text. She has worked with stone benches engraved with text since the 1980's. Her penchant for memorials led her to add more enduring materials, such as marble and granite, to her practice.
In Cliff Sappho Holzer has chosen to use the location itself as a medium for text. By carving quotes by the Greek classic poet Sappho into rock protrusions in the hill she makes the park's timelessness manifest; “I needed a text that has withstood time and echoes both intelligence and beauty”.
Holzer was invited by the art committee early in the conceptual stage of the sculpture park, to make a site-specific work. She was inspired by the area’s rock carvings from the Stone Age and its rich cultural heritage, spending a long time searching for textual sources that could work as a connection between bygone days and contemporary society. Rather than introducing new material, she chose to use the place itself as a medium for the text.
Cliff Sappho consists of text carved into the rock by Kjærlighetstien (Lover’s Walk) and on a stone placed by Spettestien (The Woodpecker Path). The texts are from the poems of the female poet Sappho, who lived around 600 BC. Sappho was a lauded poet in her time for her emotional love poems, written both to women and men. Today only fragments of her lyrical work remain. Holzer worked with Canadian writer and scholar Anne Carson (b. 1950), who has researched and translated Sappho’s fragments, to select the texts and their placement in the park.
Guided tours
Experience Cliff Sappho and many of the other artworks in the collection with our art mediators. We offer guided tours for private groups all year around.
Cultural heritage in Ekeberg
Cliff Sappho is site spesific and connects to the many cultural heritage sites in the park.