Jenny Holzer at the Serralves Foundation in Porto

 

Wrong Answers (2026), the first solo exhibition of American artist Jenny Holzer in Portugal, opens within the sprawling garden-exhibition space of the Serralves Foundation (Fundação de Serralves). In the midst of the American political moment, where the airwaves are replete with references to President Donald Trump, Holzer adapts her decades-long visual language to address these divisive and peculiar times.

 

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers | all photos © Serralves Foundation

 

messages to the Trump administration

 

Opening the Serralves show is Holzer’s READY FOR YOU (2023–25), a golden canvas turned upside down. Caught at just the right angle, the gleam gives way to reveal the hand-scrawled message ‘THEY ARE READY FOR YOU WHEN YOU ARE,’ framed by a very fine, inconspicuous printing of the White House’s letterhead. It references the note President Trump received during the riots that occurred on January 6th. The gold leafing recalls his interior tastes, which have seeped into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue during his time in office. Turned upside down, it recalls the gesture of inverting the American flag, one that signals grave danger to those who can see it.

 

The next room over opens up to a saturated tiling of the artist’s paper-and-text work, Inflammatory Essays (1979–82). Living in New York in the 70s and 80s, Holzer was surrounded by the paper poster, a powerful messaging tool that colored the city’s surfaces. Inspired by the rhythm and syntax of manifestos, the artist developed pithy, one-hundred-word essays. Through careful writing, editing, and rewriting, she transforms the words into a visual object. In a later part of Wrong Answers, Holzer’s early drafts with her handwritten edits are displayed alongside the ephemera that has emerged from her art practice.

 

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers

 

inflammatory essays and truisms

 

In Serralves’s display of Inflammatory Essays, the works are precisely placed from floor to ceiling in alternating diagonal lines of shockingly bright colors. Her words are equally striking. In an all-caps serif font that reads like a newspaper headline, the piece rattles off statements like, ‘CHANGE IS THE BASIS OF ALL HISTORY, THE PROOF OF VIGOR.’ and ‘THE RECKONING WILL BE HASTENED BY THE STAGING OF SEED DISTURBANCES.’ On the occasion of the Porto exhibition, the texts have also been translated into Portuguese. In a sense, this deceptively simple vehicle for her artistic language most adeptly encapsulates the artist’s prolific relationship with the aestheticization of the written word.

 

As these messages swirl forward, the rainbow gives way to the stark white work of Truisms (1977–79). Here, single-sentence declarations appear on rectangular sheets that look almost like scrolls, diplomas, or other forms of official documents. Atop this tessellation of words is the giant portrait of a face that nearly fills the entire wall and bears a striking resemblance to the 45th and 47th president of the United States. Prompting AI first with ‘enraged orator,’ she added other qualities in Gemini and ChatGPT until the face came to look like Trump.

 

 

Holzer’s work with street art

 

The image was then given to Porto-based graffiti artist Kilo to recreate in spray paint for Wrong Answers. This collaboration also manifested as an immersive graffiti-covered space in the alcove on the mezzanine level of the Serralves library. Together, they reference how Holzer has continually collaborated with street artists throughout her career.

 

In her address of the Trump administration, her work comes across as more visually literal, using the visage to fight a visage. It’s almost as if she concedes to the fact that this particular force can’t be brought to the table with words alone. The table must be gaudy, gold, and filled with his image like papal memorabilia.

 

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers

 

Laments (1989) and working with stone

 

While paper has an ephemeral, nearly disposable quality to it, Holzer has also turned to more permanent mediums for her written works. For many decades, she has leveraged the format of the stone bench, which signals a resting point while also communicating a kind of ancient monumentality in the way it bears inscriptions. This is seen most notably in her work Laments (1989), featured in the show, which was created at the height of the AIDS epidemic. While iterations of benches appear around the exhibition in their original state—flat planes to sit on—they also appear in a new form.

 

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers

 

bright, spinning LEDs

 

To create the snaking LED path that flows through the corridor and winds around the exhibition space, Holzer brought a sledgehammer to some of her stone works. These chunks, which emerged from the rubble, frame a trickle of blaring black-and-orange signs that flow down the hall like stones at the edge of a brook. They lead to a pile of nearly innumerable signs strewn haphazardly on the floor that contain an overpowering, overstimulating hodgepodge of colors, words, and wires.

 

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers

Installation Views of Jenny Holzer: Wrong Answers

 

In this site-specific retrospective, Wrong Answers collects the works, mediums, and techniques that have defined the American artist. There are spinning LED works, poetic self-devised slogans, and messages carved in stone. Her work has continually adapted, both in media and message, to the times in which she has lived while also revealing the story of Holzer herself.

 

project info: 

 

artist: Jenny Holzer

location: Porto, Portugal

institution: the Serralves Foundation (Fundação de Serralves)

date: June 18 – November 1, 2026

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