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Conceptual artist Jenny Holzer is best known for her projections. Like a mirror reflecting back the image of who we are – Holzer’s projections can be quite alarming. Her medium is often words and her ever-changing canvas can range from a solemn marble cemetery bench, to the side of a building, to the intimate surface of a latex condom.

Holzer often encroaches on the territory of advertising and interrupts the jingle of slogans by interjecting contemplative sayings, which she calls  “Truisms”. If ad campaigns deal in falsity she’s arrived to deliver its hidden shadow: the Truth – with strong sayings like: “Abuse of Power Comes As No Surprise”,  “There is Blood and More Blood” and “Religion Causes as Many Problems as it Solves”.

She then plays a game of alchemy by awakening inanimate objects as if they had feelings – blood – a heart. A wall in Florence screams “You Are My Own”. A craggy bluff in San Diego sighs “I Breathe”.

Holzer’s work invites the collective public to sharpen their wit yet soften their hearts. “It is in Your Self-Interest to Find a Way to Be Very Tender” say the words arranged on a marquis of a movie theater in Chicago. This phrase is part of a series called “Truisms For Survival” (1983-1985).

The series began in 1983 when Ronald Feldman of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Gallery in Soho, New York invited a group of artists to create a series of work loosely inspired by the themes of George Orwell’s novel “1984”. Jenny Holzer, then an emerging artist, had 7 of her provocative sayings from her “Truisms for Survival” series printed onto a small stack of Styrofoam cups.

The 7 statements were:  If You’re Considered Useless No One Will Feed You Anymore, Savor Kindness Because Cruelty is Always Possible Later, You are Trapped on Earth So You Will Explode, You Can’t See or Taste Many of the Things that Kill You Now, You are so Complex that You Don’t Always Respond to Danger, Stupid People Shouldn’t Breed, and What Urge Will Save Us Now That Sex Won’t?

The sayings are snarky, cynical, cold and even heartfelt. In light of our planet reaching a human population of 7 Billion they truly resonate as a call for survival. Yet, the fact that they are printed on Styrofoam cups – a product that has become the poster child of bad environmental behavior –  doesn’t leave much room for hope. How can one be committed to survival when you are drinking out of a Styrofoam cup? That’s the brilliance of Holzer’s comedic irony.

The most prophetic among Holzer’s six statements “You are so complex that you don’t always respond to danger” is the condition behind apathy and it is also the key to our survival. As if to say, “If we learn to recognize danger and find safety in the act of responding we might still have a chance.”