About the Work
Jenny Holzer is most famous for her series of Truisms, short maxims, sometimes serious, sometimes ironic, that she writes and appropriates to comment on contemporary culture. Her first Truisms from the 1970s were printed in black ink on white posters, but later she incorporated modern technology, displaying her texts on LED screens. The text on this screen comes from Holzer's Inflammatory Essays, pleading for autonomy from both a physical standpoint—“STARVE THE FLESH, SHAVE THE HAIR”—as well as a psychological one—“DENY NATURE, REJECT ACQUAINTANCES.”
About the Artist
Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist best known for her text-based works, which are constructed from “truisms” such as “abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “protect me from what I want.” By experimenting with the use of words visually displayed in public spaces, Holzer is able to stimulate public discussions about violence, sexuality, oppression, human rights, feminism, power, war, and death. Starting with street posters, Holzer’s practice has come to incorporate LED screens that run with stock-ticker-like texts, painted signs, plaques, photographs, sound, video, and the Internet.
Until 1993, Holzer wrote her own texts, after which she began to appropriate texts by Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, and other champions of human rights, including Elfriede Jelinek, Fadhil Al-Azawi, Yehuda Amichai, and Mahmoud Darwish. Recent works include I Was in Baghdad Ochre Fade (2007), a series of oil on linen transcriptions of torture documents from the Iraq War; Redaction Paintings (2009), which were created using recently released classified memos with texts blacked out by censors; and an installation in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center. In 1990, she was the first woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, where she won the Golden Lion for the best artist.
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