ARTicle #1 JENNY HOLZER

THE AESTHETICS OF (NOT) SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD

Portrait of Jenny Holzer by A.B. that says “Abuse of power comes as no surprise”

It was 2012, and I was scribbling my way out of the closet. Falling in love with poetry dominoed to falling in love with my poetry teacher. Secrets scrawled quickly on my diary pages, pouring out of me for the first time. Working in ministry, as I did for 10 years, there was always a veneer. A clean, bright smile that hid my irritation, my discomfort, and, even more dangerously, my desire. Desire for women, sure, but more than that, a desire to know, to teach, to be… a person and to say all things that were actually on my mind. To articulate the sexism, the narcissism, the capitalism around me, to say the silent part out loud. Enter Jenny Holzer, stage left.

I was auditing a class on performance art with my mentor. In this class, we read about and watched a documentary on Holzer. She worked with texts in evocative ways. Sometimes it was projectors, other times ticker tapes, and often marquees in crowded places. She created tremendous installations over the ocean, Times Square, and throughout entire buildings. My favorite works, though, actually obscured the texts they sought to highlight. Creating paintings of redacted texts, Holzer exposed the erasure of war crimes, cover-ups, and scandals in government documents, a clever trick. Critique without having to say a word. A fast crank on the volume knob to blare the silent part out loud, to holler “THEY SAY THERE'S NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLX!”

Jenny Holzer “Top Secret End Game, 2019”

Oil, moon gold leaf and palladium leaf on linen

Fast forward to this weekend. I wandered the museums of D.C. with my partner, turning the corner in the National Museum of Women in the Arts. There was a large painting—gold, silver, a glowing redaction. I gasped and turned to Kim. “That looks like a Jenny Holzer!” I checked the tag. Sure enough, it was: "Top Secret Endgame-2019." I’d only seen her redaction paintings in black and white. This one was a mix of glittering gold and palladium leaf, my current fascination (gold leaf, that is). “She’d have a field day with Epstein,” I said. We laughed. I caught another sharp breath. “Is that a Kara Walker?”

Walking through this gallery feels like a party with old friends. There isn’t much famous women’s art in the tiny Midwest town we have decided to make our home. I cling to their presence as if my body knows it will be a long time until I see one again. There is something about a gallery, the quality of light, the slight chill in the air, the way sounds change in the acoustics. I try so hard to keep my voice low, but the excitement in my body escapes in my quick steps and excited whispers.

New York Times April 5, 2026

The next day, we sat in the airport waiting to board our plane to go home, so I bought a paper copy of the New York Times—another luxury I can’t get at home. Thumbing through the pages, I said, “Oh my God, a Jenny Holzer!” It showed redacted pages from the Epstein files. The article was titled “The Epstein Emails Show #MeToo Never Stood a Chance.“

A stray detail in the article caught my eye, a story about Michael Wolff, who sent Epstein an email titled “Are women bad for journalism?” The context was, of course, that women had been telling their stories of assault and harassment in journalism, but I can’t help but hear its echoes through the halls of the mega church, the galleries, the current political hellscape. And let’s not pretend it's just women. It is, of course, as always, the queers, the people of color, and the worshippers of other faiths who are “bad” for the places where they have been included.

I say to Kim, “Redaction paintings are a useful strategy.” They essentially draw attention to the void. Kind of like Ana Mendieta’s work in landscapes, where she would create silhouettes of her body in the earth. The outlines would reveal where she wasn’t, her absence. I wonder aloud if we could use this in the ARTspace we plan to open next year. Maybe a community art project, maybe an installation that takes as its goal to draw attention to people/stories/identities that are being erased, hidden, ignored, essentially redacted.

At forty, I have no secrets. My journal mostly sits untouched, occupied instead by a kitten eager for my hands. Working in the service industry and the academy in a region where I am the political minority, let's say that shiny ministry veneer has served me well. People can look at me, my partner, my degrees, and my microexpressions to know exactly where I stand on many issues, but I mostly don’t say them out loud. I dream of a future where my art will do that for me.