Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer presents original and found statements in a wide range of formats, inviting us to consider the societal messages we receive and the power dynamics underwriting them. "I like placing content wherever people look," she has remarked, "and that can be at the bottom of a cup or on a shirt or hat or on the surface of a river or all over a building."

In 1972, as an aspiring painter, Holzer was awarded a BFA in printmaking and painting from Ohio University. She received an MFA in 1977 from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she began writing on her previously abstract drawings and paintings because she "wanted content in the work." Around this time, Holzer moved to New York City, joining the art collective Collaborative Projects Inc. (Colab) and enrolling in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In New York City, Holzer began her first text-based series, Truisms (1977–79), consisting of typed lists of aphorisms––like "Money creates taste"––that are offered as general truths. Gathering these sayings together illuminates how divergent and contradictory supposedly shared observations can be. Initially, Holzer posted the Truisms anonymously around the city, leaving viewers to decide what held "true" for them.

In the early 1980s, Holzer continued her interventions into public space with her Living series (1980–82), placing matter-of-fact descriptions of "everyday life with a twist" on signs and metal plaques mounted on buildings, in the style of historical markers or directories. A pivotal 1982 invitation to display work on the Spectacolor signboard in Times Square led to Holzer's first use of electronic signage. This became a signature medium she continues to explore, often through site-specific, commissioned LED installations.

Extended time in rocky upstate New York from the mid-1980s spurred Holzer's interest in stone, and, in 1986, she began making benches carved with her words. Amid the AIDS epidemic, Holzer also made sarcophagi featuring the mournful language of her series Laments (1989), and in 1996 further reflected on loss in Arno, a text she used for her first light projection that same year. In the early 1990s, Holzer variously responded to atrocities of war, in text-based series as well as memorials, and her 2005 return to painting saw her enlarging redacted government documents related to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to fill large canvases. Public works from the late 2010s tackle gun violence and encourage voting, often through truck-mounted texts.

Throughout her career, Holzer's engagement with language has consistently moved across forms and contexts, from clothing to trucks to light projections on architecture and natural terrain. In her site-specific For SAAM (2007), texts from Truisms, Living, Survival (1983–85), and Arno swirl down a towering LED column, together offering a mini-survey of her early career.

Authored by Katherine Markoski, American Women’s History Initiative Writer and Editor, 2024.