Jenny Holzer

(Ohio, 1950)

Conceptual artist, whose work addresses themes such as power, violence, beliefs, memory, love, sex and death. Its iconographic proposal revolves around language and lexical communicative codes. Texts inscribed or projected in the urban environment and architectural space, but also in other media communication devices. The phrases are grouped into series, aphorisms that challenge a broader audience than the museum audience to ask questions about social inequalities, everyday life, violence... In his first series Truisms (1977-1979), he printed aphorisms on t-shirts and posters that he distributed around the city. Texts from Inflammatory Essays appeared on street signs in Manhattan. The aphorisms from the Living series, 1980-1982 were seen on an electronic panel in Times Square, appropriating electronic devices with messages characterized by subversive social engagement. Survival Series texts are configured on various combinations of electronic signs, small electronic screens, and photographic lighting control tables. In 1993, one of his messages written with the blood of Bosnian women was published: 'Where women die, I am totally alert', with this project and the photographic series 'Sex Murder', 1993-1994, where he wrote phrases about women's skin, Holzer wanted to draw attention to the numerous sexual crimes and rapes occurring in Bosnia.

In Banquete_03 he carried out an intervention that consisted of projecting his messages on the illuminated signs of the cleaning tank roads, appealing to passers-by with combative phrases.