Jenny Holzer is an American installation and conceptual feminist artist who is best known for her use of original or borrowed text to create public works of art using LED signs and light projections.
Holler was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio. She intended to become an abstract painter, and studied art at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina before specialising in printmaking and drawing at the University of Chicago. She then completed a BFA at Ohio University, Athens before continuing her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she gained a MFA. After graduating, she moved to Manhattan to join the Whitney Museum’s independent study program where she first began to work with language, installation and public art.
Holzer’s first public works were entitled Truisms, and are some of her best-known works. She used simplified phrases to sum up some of texts on the extensive Witney Museum reading list, including “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “There is a fine line between information and propaganda.” These were printed in black italic script on white paper and wheat-pasted them to buildings, walls and fences where members of the public could engage with them, scrawling messages and commenting on the phrases. The text was cynical and often political, and she expanded the work to print on posters, T-shirts and stickers. Holzer then create her second series of work “Inflammatory Essays” which were printed as small posters before becoming a manuscript entitled The Black Book (1979).
In 1980, Holzer began the “Living Series” in which she printed on aluminium and bronze plaques, similar to those used by medical and government buildings. The text was accompanied by portraits by artist Peter Nadin, and dealt with the necessities of daily life including eating, breathing sleeping and human interactions. Two years later, Holzer, sponsored by the Public Art Fund, was able to install her first LED installation in Times Square, New York City. The signboard flashed nine of her “Truisms” at 40 second intervals and Holzer was able to reach a far larger audience than before. She used LEDs again in her “Survival Series”, in which she communicated the realities of everyday living and the horrors that it may bring. Holzer then began incorporating stone into her work, creating large marble benches bearing text in the style of headstones accompanied by her LED signs for her “Under a Rock” exhibition at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York. Holzer was explicitly using images and text that suggested male power, and their control over women and is known for speaking out on violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death.
In 1989, Holzer was the first female artist chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in Italy. Holzer’s installation, Mother and Child utilised her LED signboards and marble benches and won the Leone D’Oro for best pavilion. In 1996, she began using large-scale outdoor light projections, using public locations that demand viewers attention. From 2001, she has been using borrowed text in her work and in 2005 she returned to painting when using redacted or declassified government documents from the Iraq war in her work, making public that which was once secret.
Holzer has received several prestigious awards, including the Art Institute of Chicago’s Blair Award (1982); the Skowhegan Medal for Installation (1994); the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum (1996); the Berlin Prize fellowship (2000); the Order of Arts and Lettersdiploma of Chevalier from the French government (2002) and the Barnard Medal of Distinction (2011).[35] In 2010, Holzer received the Distinguished Women in the Arts Award from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).