Jenny Holzer. The Whole Truth

Holzer’s work employs the written word as a means of critical reflection and creative expression. In the late 1970s, her Truisms caused a stir, challenging stereotypes about art and society while prefiguring communication methods and strategies now widely deployed in guerrilla marketing. Initially featured on everyday objects – such as street posters, T-shirts, condom wrappers, and baseball caps – these early texts were written to resemble existing aphorisms, maxims, and clichés. Holzer went on to write a number of other text series and later began using the words of others, often in large or more permanent formats including electronic signs, stone benches, and light projections on natural and architectural surfaces, as well as oil paintings and watercolours.

The texts in these works speak of violence, oppression, gender, sexuality, power, war, and death. In Holzer’s art, modes of presentation more often associated with institutional information, news, and advertising become a powerful tool to address political and social issues. She uses language to challenge social norms, prejudices, and violence. The immediacy of Holzer’s message is a weapon against the mystification of reality, as implemented on a daily basis by media organisations, government agencies, and advertisers who engage in the banalisation of language.

The exhibition organised by the GAMeC in Bergamo’s historical Palazzo della Ragione comes only two months after the opening of the artist’s major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Tutta la verità establishes a dialogue between the stately medieval building, with its grand architectural elements and frescoes, and the subversive poetics of the American artist.

The walls of the Sala delle Capriate, a symbolic place where historically local justice was administered, will provide the backdrop for a series of new light projections. The texts chosen by Holzer for this special occasion will touch on important themes in her work– identity, gender, and dialogue – and in particular will address the ongoing migrant crisis. The authors whose words are featured in the projections include Alemu Tebeje Ayele, Antar Mohamed Marincola, Armin Gorozian, Arnold de Vos, Dunya Mikhail, Faraj Bayrakdar, Fatiha Kamel, Ghayath Almadhoun, Gëzim Hajdari, Hasan Al Nassar, Khawla Dunia, Mahmoud Darwish, Mihai Mircea Butcovan, Mohammad-Reza Shafiei Kadkani, Mohja Kahf, Najat Abdul Samad, Omid Shams, Osama Alomar, Sham al-Sa’id, Siza Gorozian, Wisława Szymborska, Yehuda Amichai, Yousif M. Qasmiyeh, and Zein Abdullah.

The exhibition also draws on poems and other texts by Italian writers, including Patrizia Cavalli and Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as authors from other national contexts, such as Wisława Szymborska, Anna Świrszczyńska, and James Schuyler.

An integral part of the installation will be nine marble benches produced for the occasion thanks to the generous support of the Fondazione Henraux. Placed in a circle, the artworks will provide a place to pause and reflect on both the illuminated walls and the sentences carved into the surfaces of the benches themselves.