Reading Hannah Arendt (Politically)
2006

Installation with hanging plastic panels printed with quotations by Hannah Arendt.
Commissioned for the exhibition Hannah Arendt Denkraum, Berlin.



Selected passages from the political theorist Hannah Arendt are printed in German and English on transparent plastic panels that extend from floor to ceiling, layered to form a composite text. As visitors move through the installation, they may decipher the words from a distance, up close, or overlapping each other—a physical demonstration of the many ways Arendt may be read. Initially mounted for the centenary of Arendt’s birth, the installation attests to the significance of Arendt’s writing on totalitarianism, censorship, and the culture of fear in the post-9/11 period.

The installation was shown as part of Martha Rosler: Irrespective (2018, Jewish Museum), and in An American in the 21st Century (2019, Galleria Raffaella Cortese).