Jenny Holzer

Survival Series (Pencils)

Boxed set of 12 pencils with stamped text (6 texts, 2 of each), cardboard box

20.3 × 15.2 × 1.3 cm

Multiple edition, unsigned and unnumbered.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1991

Excellent condition. Complete set, unsharpened pencils, original box with light handling wear consistent with age.

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In 1991, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery produced this boxed set of pencils featuring texts from Jenny Holzer’s Survival series. Conceived as an everyday object transformed into a carrier of language, the work extends Holzer’s long-standing strategy of inserting urgent, confrontational statements into ordinary contexts.

The set contains twelve unsharpened wooden pencils, each stamped in red with one of six Survival phrases, presented here in pairs. Language becomes functional, portable, and quietly subversive — a tool for writing, but also for reflection, repetition, and circulation.

PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR WILL BE SECRET

MEN DON’T PROTECT YOU ANYMORE

WHAT URGE WILL SAVE US NOW THAT SEX WON’T?

THE FUTURE IS STUPID

YOU ARE TRAPPED ON THE EARTH SO YOU WILL EXPLODE

This multiple belongs to the early wave of institutional editions that helped disseminate Holzer’s texts beyond public projections and architectural interventions, anchoring them instead in the intimacy of the hand.

Published by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.