Wrong answers

Wrong Answers at the Serralves Museum is Jenny Holzer’s first solo exhibition in Portugal. It follows a trajectory from the emergence of her text works, beginning with her iconic Truisms and Inflammatory Essays, to their proliferation across stone benches and sarcophagi, paintings, robotic LED signs, human bones, and more. At a historical moment when the saturation of visual and written content across media neutralizes and distorts meaning, the show spotlights the simultaneous amplification and devaluation of words, through works that feature some form of effacement. Emblems of delimitation and falsification range from Holzer’s painterly appropriations of redacted government documents to the smashed heaps of her own stone sculptures and electronic signs. From liberated language to censorship, Wrong Answers examines how Holzer’s use of both text and erasure reflects the saving power of words as well as the violence inherent in the suppression of information, ideas, and freedom. For this exhibition, Holzer collaborated with Porto-based graffiti artist Kilos on two pieces, one painted over her Truisms posters and another in the entrance to the museum’s library.