The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project Arrives in Houston!

Launching this Saturday, June 21, LAND presents the fourth chapter of billboards as part of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project featuring the work of Eve Fowler in Houston, TX, through July 2014. 

A reading of Gertrude Stein texts by Dean Daderko and Rosine Kouamen will be held at The Brandon (1709 Westheimer Road Houston, Texas 77098) at 6pm, with a reception to follow until 8pm on Saturday, June 21, 2014.

Eve Fowler’s chapter of The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, entitled it is so, is it so, depicts excerpts of text from Bee Time Vine and Tender Buttons by seminal 20th century author Gertrude Stein. Fowler began sourcing Stein’s texts in her work in 2010 and has evolved this body of work in various iterations, one of which being a series of posters with Stein quotes placed along public streets in Los Angeles. Fowler states, “I’m interested in the multiple reads a viewer could have seeing this text in public. I’m also interested in making something that is accessible to everyone, or at least a very broad audience. I see this language as queer, in both senses of the word, but I think it is open-ended and could be interpreted in various ways.” Through isolating these quotes from their original context and reproducing them on a large scale, Fowler poetically introduces them into a dialogue with the Texas landscape as residents and travelers move throughout their day with quotes such as, ”in the morning there is meaning”, “In the evening there is feeling.” and “How sweet are suns and suns. And the season. The sea or the season, and the roads.” The open-ended gestures lure travelers westward and encourage them to pause and contemplate their space, existence, and destiny.

In addition to the billboards, free lending libraries in truck stops, hardware stores, and coffee shops will feature books to borrow or take that relate to the quotations on the billboards and Stein’s life, the majority being Modernist literature by contemporaries of Stein, such as Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Henry James, Truman Capote, and Anne Carson. Each of these texts subtly explores gender identity, a crux of Fowler’s practice as an artist.

We encourage you to follow the project on social media and contribute to the dialogue using the hashtag #LANDMD