Jenny Holzer

(b. 1950)

Jenny Holzer is best known for the text-based art she has made in public spaces since the late 1970s. Holzer turns the idioms of advertising and government records against themselves, examining how language itself is used as a tool of power and violence. A former student at the University of Chicago, Holzer has created several site-specific works in Chicago throughout her career, including projections for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2008–09 exhibition PROTECT PROTECT, bronze plaques for the Logan Center’s 2012 exhibition Wall Text, and an augmented reality app and LED trucks under the title YOU BE MY ALLY, commissioned by the University of Chicago in 2020. In the wake of the US invasion of Iraq, Holzer in 2004 started working with declassified military documents from the NSA and FBI archives, prompting reflection on the intersections of war, technology, and mass media. Her painting Freedom Riders, using FBI files on civil rights activists in the 1960s as a material, was recently created for the Obama Presidential Center.