Holzer's initial public works,
Truisms (1977–79), are among her best-known. They first appeared as anonymous broadsheets that she printed in black italic script in capital letters on white paper and wheat-pasted to buildings, walls and fences in and around Manhattan. These one-liners are a distillation of an erudite reading list from the Whitney Independent Study Program, where she was a student. She printed other
Truisms on posters, T-shirts and stickers, and carved them into stone benches. In late 1980, Holzer's mail art and street leaflets were included in the exhibition
Social Strategies by Women Artists at London's
Institute of Contemporary Arts, curated by
Lucy Lippard. In 1981, Holzer initiated the
Living series, printed on aluminum and bronze plaques, the presentation format used by medical and government buildings. The
Living series addressed the necessities of daily life: eating, breathing, sleeping, and human relationships. Her bland, short instructions were accompanied by paintings by American artist
Peter Nadin, whose portraits of men and women attached to metal posts further articulated the emptiness of both life and message in the information age.
Inflammatory Essays was a work consisting of posters Holzer created from 1979 to 1982 and put up throughout New York. The statements on the posters were influenced by political figures including
Emma Goldman,
Vladimir Lenin, and
Mao Tse-tung. Sponsored by the
Public Art Fund program, the use of
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) allowed Holzer to reach a larger audience. The texts in her subsequent
Survival series, compiled in 1983–85, speak to the great pain, delight, and ridiculousness of living in contemporary society. She began working with stone in 1986; for her exhibition that year at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York, Holzer introduced a total environment where viewers were confronted with the relentless visual buzz of a horizontal LED sign and stone benches leading up to an electronic altar. Continuing this practice, her installation at the
Guggenheim Museum in 1989 featured a 163-meter-long sign forming a continuous circle spiraling up a parapet wall. In 1989, Jenny Holzer released the
Laments series to the
Dia Art Foundation in New York; this installation consisted of columns of colored lights and carved marble and granite tops that made up the laments. Holzer uses the passages she had read while being a part of the
Whitney Independent Study Program by simplifying them for public consumption and applying them to her phrases. This series not only provokes thought in her audience through the constant reminder of death and sorrow but also exposes them to sources they normally wouldn't come across. In an interview Holzer mentions that she uses the first person "I" simply to give the impression that a dead person is speaking and therefore make the installation more interesting to her audience. In
Laments Jenny gave a voice to 13 different dead individuals, to say everything they might not have gotten the opportunity to while alive. She touches on topics like motherhood, violation, pain, torture, and even death on a personal level to these 13 individuals . Although
Laments focuses mostly on the darkness of humanity and the tragedies we face daily there is also hidden optimism in the 13 laments. In 1989, Holzer became the second female artist chosen to represent the United States at the
Venice Biennale in Italy (
Diane Arbus was the first, shown posthumously in 1972). At the 44th Biennale in 1990, her LED signboards and marble benches occupied a solemn and austere exhibition space in the American Pavilion; she also designed posters, hats, and T-shirts to be sold in the streets of Venice. The installation,
Mother and Child, won Holzer the Leone D'Oro for best pavilion. The original installation is retained in its entirety in the collection of the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the organizing institution for the American Pavilion at the 1990 Biennale. After taking a break from the art world, Holzer returned with controversy in 1993. Holzer came out with her
Lustmord series, taking the title from the German word meaning "sex murder". Holzer created the series as a response of the Bosnian War, specifically the widespread rape and murder of women. The work feature three poems that retell sex crimes from the perspective of the victim, the observer, and the perpetrator.
Lustmord has taken many different forms from texts written in blue, black, and red ink on the skin, to the
Lustmord Table, a series of different bones of the body laid on a wooden table, with silver bands wrapped around them, engraved with the text of the three poems. While Holzer wrote the texts for the bulk of her work between 1977 and 2001, since 1993, she has mainly been using texts written by others, including literary texts from such authors as Polish Nobel laureate
Wislawa Szymborska,
Henri Cole (USA),
Elfriede Jelinek (Austria),
Fadhil Al Azzawi (Iraq),
Yehuda Amichai (Israel),
Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine), Khawla Dunia (Syria), and
Mohja Kahf (Syrian American). As of 2010, Holzer's work has been focused on government documents, concerning Iraq and the Middle East. Holzer's work often concerns violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death; the artist often utilizes the rhetoric of modern information systems to address the politics of discourse. Her main aim is to enlighten, illuminating something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.
Selected works •
Inflammatory Essays (1979–82), an installation comprising texts and manifestos, which were originally printed on colored paper and wheat-pasted around the streets of New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Inflammatory Essays is included in the permanent collections of
Pérez Art Museum Miami. •
Living Series (early 1980s), using monumental media such as bronze plaques and billboards. •
Under a Rock (1986), a series juxtaposing electronic messages with poetic phrases etched on stone benches and sarcophagi. •
Laments (1989), a multi-media installation at the
Dia Art Foundation featuring 13 stone
sarcophagi. •
Da wo Frauen sterben, bin ich hellwach (1993), cover photograph and portfolio in edition number 46 of
Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin. •
Please Change Beliefs (1995), an interactive work created for the
internet art gallery
adaweb, incorporating several of the artist's
Truisms. •
Protect Me From What I Want, the 15th work commissioned for the
BMW Art Car Project. Painted on a
BMW V12 LMR, the titular refrain is written in metal foil and outlined with phosphorescent paint. Phrases written on the car's side-pods are "You are so complex, you don't respond to danger" and "The unattainable is invariably attractive". The car's rear wing reads "Lack of charisma can be fatal" and "Monomania is a prerequisite of success". The car was withdrawn from the
1999 24 Hours of Le Mans race, but saw active competition in the
2000 Petit Le Mans in the U.S., finishing fifth overall. •
Xenon for Bordeaux and Paris (2001 & 2009), text projections on various landmarks, most notably the
Louvre Pyramid, originally created for the 2001 Festival d'Automne. The Louvre projection was repeated in 2009 in honor of the pyramid's 20th anniversary. •
Terminal 5 — In October 2004, the dormant
Eero Saarinen-designed
TWA Flight Center (now Jetblue T5) at
John F. Kennedy International Airport hosted an art exhibition called
Terminal 5, curated by Rachel K. Ward and featuring the work of 18 artists. Holzer's work was displayed electronically on the terminal's original departures-arrivals board. She had wanted the work projected onto the building's exterior, but airport officials denied the request, saying the projection could interfere with runway operations. This work has been cited as a significant example of
word art. •
I Was In Baghdad Ochre Fade*, (2007), Oil-on-linen transcriptions of torture documents from the Iraq War; part of the
Renaissance Society 2007 group show, "Meanwhile, In Baghdad..." •
For SAAM (2007), Holzer's first cylindrical column of light and text, created from white electronic LEDs and featuring texts from four of the artist's series —
Truisms,
Living (selections),
Survival (selections) and
Arno; commissioned by the
Smithsonian American Art Museum. •
Redaction Paintings (2008), reproducing declassified memos, with much of the text blacked out by censors. •
For Leonard Cohen (2017)
, a series of large-scale light projections on Silo no 5, one of Montréal's most iconic architectural structures, created in conjunction with the
Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition
Leonard Cohen – A Crack in Everything. The installation featured phrases from
Leonard Cohen's poems and songs, projected in both French and English for five nights only, starting on November 7, the first anniversary of Cohen's death, through November 11, 2017.
Permanent displays •
IT TAKES A WHILE BEFORE YOU CAN STEP OVER INERT BODIES AND GO AHEAD WITH WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO. From The Living Series (1989), twenty-eight white granite benches with inscriptions, part of the
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden •
Installation for Aachen (Selections from the
Truisms and other series) (1991),
Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany •
Green Table (1992), a large granite picnic table with inscriptions, part of the
Stuart Collection of public art on the campus of the
University of California, San Diego •
Installation for Schiphol (1995), permanent installation at
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam, the Netherlands •
Erlauf Peace Monument (1995), outdoor installation with texts memorializing lives lost and peace gained in World War II in
Erlauf, Austria •
Allentown Benches (Selections from the
Truisms and
Survival series) (1995), United States Courthouse, Allentown •
Installation for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) Permanent Installation, located off the main room of the Guggenheim Bilbao, with tall LED columns of text in English (red, on the front side) and Basque (blue, on the back side) •
Oskar Maria Graf Memorial (1997),
Literaturhaus, Munich •
Ceiling Snake (1997), 138 electronic LED signs with red diodes over 47.6 meters, permanently installed at the
Hamburger Kunsthalle •
Bench (From the
Survival Series of 8 benches) (1997), bench made of green marble at the Faulconer Gallery,
Grinnell College; Portuguese inscription: NUM SONHO VOCE ENCONTROU UM JEITO DE SOBREVIVER E SE ENCHEU DE ALEGRIA. (IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY.) •
Truisms selections on permanent LED displays and carved into stone benches outside of Gordy Hall on the campus of
Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, installed 1998 • There is a permanent LED sign along the top of the Telenor building in Oslo, Norway, installed in 2002. •
Untitled (1999), installation for Isla de Esculturas, Pontevedra, Spain •
Blacklist (1999), permanent installation composed of 10 stone benches with engraved quotes from
The Hollywood Ten located in front of the
University of Southern California's
Fisher Museum of Art •
Historical Speeches (1999), 4-sided electronic LED sign with amber diodes, permanently installed at the
Reichstag, Berlin; the piece displays a selection of speeches given in the Reichstag and
Bundestag, and plays for 12 days without repeating itself • The
Black Garden of Nordhorn, the artist was commissioned to redesign a memorial to the fallen of Germany's three previous wars, including World War II. Next to the existing monolithic monument, she designed a circular garden consisting of concentric rings of plantings and pathways. •
Installation for the U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building, Sacramento (1999), a collection of statements on law, justice, and truth gathered from various sources and inscribed on 99 paving stones on the ground floor of the
Robert T. Matsui United States Courthouse in Sacramento, CA. •
Wanås Wall (2002), inscriptions on stones on the grounds of
Wanås Castle, Knislinge, Sweden •
Serpentine (2002), electronic LED sign with blue diodes, permanently installed at the
Toray Building, Osaka •
Untitled (2002), installation at
University of Agder, Gimlemoen, Norway •
125 Years (2003), a site work at the
University of Pennsylvania, celebrating 125 years of women at University of Pennsylvania •
For Pittsburgh (2005), Holzer's largest LED project in the United States boasting 688 feet of blue LED tubes attached to two edges of the roof of the
David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh •
For Elizabeth (2006), permanent outdoor work for the
Vassar College campus consisting of twenty backless and armless granite benches, inscribed with the poetry of alumna and Pulitzer Prize-winner
Elizabeth Bishop •
For 7 World Trade (2006), permanent LED installation in the 65-foot-wide, 14-foot-high wall in the lobby of
7 World Trade Center •
For Novartis (2006–07), permanent LED installation at
Novartis HQ, Basel, Switzerland •
For MCASD (2007), permanent LED installation on the façade of the Copley Building at
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Downtown •
VEGAS (2009), LED installation commissioned for the parking lot of
Aria Resort & Casino, Las Vegas •
Bench (2011), marble bench at
Barnard College. •
715 Molecules (2011), commissioned installation at
Williams College consisting of a 16 ½ -foot long and 4-foot wide stone table and four benches, the surfaces of which have been sandblasted with 715 unique molecules •
New York City AIDS Memorial (2016), granite pavers with lines from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" •
For Philadelphia (2018), permanent installation at the
Comcast Technology Center, Philadelphia, PA
Mixed media screen prints At the
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007, Holzer presented a series of mixed media silk-screen prints; each of the 15 same-size, medium-large canvases, stained purple or brown, bears an all-black, silk-screened reproduction of a PowerPoint diagram used in 2002 to brief
President Bush,
Donald Rumsfeld and others on the
United States Central Command's plan for
invading Iraq. Holzer found these documents at the Web site of the independent, nongovernmental
National Security Archive (nsarchive.org), which obtained them through the
Freedom of Information Act, and has used them as source material for her work since 2004. Other paintings depict confessions or letters from prisoners of all kinds and their families (parents pleading that the Army discharge rather than court-martial their sons); autopsy and interrogation reports; or exchanges concerning torture, as well as prisoners' handprints and maps of Baghdad. Holzer concentrates on documents that have been partially or almost completely redacted with censor's marks.
Dance Holzer's first dance project was in 1985, "Holzer Duet ... Truisms" with
Bill T. Jones. In 2010, she collaborated with choreographer
Miguel Gutierrez for the Co-Lab series at the
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. There were 10 dancers who performed in a room in which Holzer's words were projected along the walls.
Publications by Holzer •
A Little Knowledge (1979) •
Black Book (1980) •
Hotel (with Peter Nadin, 1980) •
Living (with Nadin, 1980) •
Eating Friends (with Nadin, 1981) •
Eating Through Living (with Nadin, 1981) •
Truisms and Essays (1983) •
The Venice Installation (1990) •
Die Macht des Wortes = (2006) == Exhibitions ==