Jenny Holzer

The accessibility of her work, which viewers often discover in urban daily life, has always been a consideration. For Holzer, it is not simply what she is saying, but how, where, and when it is said. She plays on the interrelationship of text, medium, and context — both geographic location and point in time — to capture viewers’ attention and encourage reflection.

Her iconic billboard in Times Square is a poignant example of her ability to put the machinery of contemporary mass media to artistic use. Camouflaged among the superficially seductive advertisements and news tickers of the Manhattan cityscape, unexpected sentiments like “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT” invite us to question the power structures that shape our world. Likewise, her marble skateboard, carved with the word “IMPEACH” to commemorate the trial of President Trump, asks us to pause and consider a historic political moment before it disappears from the news cycle.

While Holzer has dedicated her practice to text-based works, she believes that “sometimes language doesn’t cut it.”* In various representations of Lustmord, a work responding to the sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls during war in the former Yugoslavia, Holzer has used human bones to convey the horror and sadness of these crimes. In her Redaction Paintings, a series begun in 2005, Holzer presents declassified US government documents related to America’s military campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The documents, featuring extensive redactions by government censors, include memos, bureaucratic forms, letters, and e-mail exchanges regarding al-Qaeda, torture at Abu Ghraib, and prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay. At times Holzer replaces the redacted blocks in these documents with paint in myriad colors and patterns, drawing us in to read the haunting words, such as “Water Board” and “ENDGAME,” that remain on the canvas.

Holzer often employs technology in her work, recently using robotics, apps, and augmented reality to examine the changing global landscapes of information, surveillance, and power in our age of big data. Regardless of the medium, Holzer’s multifaceted practice is consistently tied together by her examination of human suffering: “We do not need to work on joy… but one must argue with cruelty… I like to argue.”** While the questions she poses have no singular answer, by asking them, Holzer invites the viewer to reflect.

Often playing with humor despite her sobering subject matter, Holzer demonstrates an implicit optimism in her work that points beyond the status quo: “Play should be present, so it shows the great wealth of possibility in life.”** Within her critique of present realities is a confident and positive forward motion — it is this fundamental belief in change, combined with her commitment to art that is public and accessible, that renders Jenny Holzer’s practice so profoundly radical.