Jonathan Horowitz, Your Land/My Land: Election ’12

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art joins the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the New Museum in New York, and other museums across the United States to present Jonathan Horowitz’s Your Land/My Land: Election ’12—a special exhibition coinciding with the 2012 American Presidential Election.

Your Land/My Land: Election ’12 is a reimagined installation originally presented by Horowitz during the 2008 presidential election. At each location (as in ’08), red and blue area rugs will divide the exhibition space into opposing zones, reflecting America’s color-coded, political, and cultural divide. Back-to-back monitors will be suspended between the carpets, with one broadcasting a live feed of Fox News, the other of MSNBC.

The space created by Horowitz will provide a location for people to gather and watch coverage of as well as talk about the presidential election. The installation’s central trope is a divided United States swathed in only red and blue.

According to Horowitz, “If race and gender were the defining themes of the ’08 election, economic policy and economic disparity will likely be the defining themes of the 2012 election. The placement of the lyrics will extend this metaphor to the land of the museum and the land outside. To some, museums are decidedly blue—elitist bastions of liberalism—to others, they are lynchpins of a capitalist art market analogous to other capitalist markets that have been collapsing around us.”

When Your Land/My Land opens, a portrait of President Obama, as the current representative of all Americans, will hang from the ceiling between the two sides and a portrait of Mitt Romney will sit on the floor. On election night, each venue will host an election returns event, with the installation becoming a minimalist backdrop. If Obama wins, the position of the two portraits will remain the same. Should Obama be unseated, their positions will be switched.

Participating venues include:

Contemporary Art Museum: St Louis, MO – Sept.7–Nov. 11

Contemporary Art Museum: Raleigh, NC – Sept. 22–Nov. 13

Contemporary Arts Museum: Houston, TX – late Sept.–Nov. 11

Hammer Museum: Los Angeles, CA – late Sept. – late Nov.

Utah Museum of Contemporary Art: Salt Lake City, UT – Oct. 5–Nov. 24

New Museum: New York City, NY – Oct. 10- Nov. 18

Telfair Museums: Savannah, GA – Oct. 5–Nov. 18