Visual Instruction: Cixous

Abstract

Books created through a combined effort between artists and scholars occur seldom and are not always successful. A particular imbalance is found in the relationship between image and text: often the visual components serve merely to illustrate the more dominant text. The American artist Roni Horn has finally repositioned the importance of images in books. The voice of French philosopher Hélène Cixous is not merely the “sujet” of Horn’s book, but her instructive voice appears simultaneously in “image.” Horn thus both deconstructs the chimera of the photo’s ability to immediately visually depict the real and also adds a new dimension to Cixous’ philosophic position with her images.