Jenny Holzer (with Tibor Kalman), LUSTMORD 1993-94

Photographs of handwriting in ink on skin 

32x22cm each

The English equivalent of the German word 'lustmord' is 'rape-slaying'. This was the title of several works Holzen made in the aftermath of war in the former Yugoslavia.

The project was first presented in Südeutsches Zeitung Magazin in Germany. Text were written on the skin of women volunteers, and presented as cropped photographs on the magazine pages. There is no way of knowing whether the skin surfaces belongs to a victim, perpetrator or observer. The texts similarly  alternate between the three view points. The magazine cover reproduced one of the texts in red ink mixed with blood provided by women involved in the project. The writing on the skin opens up the incongruity  between the rape as a traumatic act and its symbolic inscription. The inscriptions remain detached from the body: they are messages that can never convey the trauma of the act itself.