Born July 29, 1950 / Gallipolis, Ohio, U.S.A.

Since the late 1970s, when her Truisms and Inflammatory Essays were first posted anonymously around New York City, Jenny Holzer's work has challenged many of the conventions of traditional art, especially in the context of public spaces. Writing is the basis of Holzer's practice. To date she has written sixteen text series, from Truisms (1977–79) to IT IS GUNS (2018–22), and cowritten three collaborative texts. In addition to these, Holzer also draws on historical and documentary sources as well as the work of contemporary writers such as Wisława Szymborska and Henri Cole. She employs her chosen texts singly or in combination in her permanent works, installations, and projections.

Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio. After attending high school in Ohio and Florida, she enrolled in Duke University's liberal arts program in 1968 and later attended the University of Chicago from 1970 to 1971. In 1972, Holzer completed her undergraduate work at Ohio University with a bachelor's degree in fine arts. In 1975, she entered the Master of Fine Arts program at the Rhode Island School of Design. During her MFA studies, Holzer moved to New York City to participate in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, where she began her first series of public art texts. She completed her MFA in 1977.

Media employed in Holzer's practice vary. Writing is programmed into electronic signs, printed on posters and T-shirts, cast as bronze plaques, etched on silver, and carved into stone benches, floors, and sarcophagi. Her statements have appeared in news magazines and on billboards, automobiles, movie marquees, and websites, and have been projected onto facades, walls, water, and mountainsides. Her recent use of text ranges from silk-screened paintings of declassified government documents detailing prisoner abuse to poetry and prose in a sixty-five-foot-wide wall of light at the World Trade Center.

She has executed permanent installations for institutions such as the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Japan (1995), the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997), the Bundestag in Berlin (1999), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2007), Aria Campus in Las Vegas (2009), and the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2017). She has also created and contributed to memorials including Black Garden in Nordhorn, Germany (1994), BLACKLIST at the University of Southern California (1999), and You Have Given Me Love at the New York City AIDS Memorial (2016).

Among the awards Holzer has received are the Leone d'Oro grand prize for best pavilion at the 44th Venice Biennale (1990), the World Economic Forum's Crystal Award (1996), a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin (2000), the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Award for Distinguished Women in the Arts (2010), the US State Department's International Medal of Arts (2017), and the University of Chicago's Rosenberger Medal (2019).

Her honorary degrees include doctorates from Ohio University, Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, the New School, Smith College, and the Pratt Institute.

Jenny Holzer lives and works in Hoosick, New York. She is represented by Hauser & Wirth, Sprüth Magers, and Kukje Gallery.