US museum revives Polish art projection that defined the 1980s

Polish-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko is set to revive one of his most politically-charged art installations for a special showing almost three decades after it first went on display.

Wodiczko said that the 30-year-old projection, dubbed “one of the most significant public artworks of the 1980s”, was still “strangely familiar and at once unbearably relevant”.

The image, which shows a hand holding a gun, a hand holding a candle and a row of microphones, was first projected onto Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum in October 1988, spreading across all three storeys of the museum’s curved facade.

The work was widely seen as a political response to Regan-era policies. By borrowing tactics from film and advertising, Wodiczko used recognizable imagery on a massive scale in a bid to elicit reactions on themes such as political rhetoric, reproductive rights and the death penalty,

The iconic installation will appear at the Hirshhorn Museum once more to celebrate the opening of the museum’s upcoming exhibition, Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s.

The projection will be on show for visitors between 6:30pm and 9:00pm, 13-15 February.

“More than ever before, the meaning of our monuments depends on our active role in turning them into sites of memory and [places for the] critical evaluation of history, as well as places of public discourse and action,” said Wodiczko.

Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s will run at the Hirshhorn Museum between 14 February and 13 May. For more details, click here.