Jenny Holzer revisits Times Square billboard art in Porto

Back in 1982, brief sentences appeared sandwiched between advertisements on a massive electronic billboard in Times Square, New York. Statements like PRIVATE PROPERTY CREATED CRIME, TORTURE IS BARBARIC, and ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE were not selling merchandise or giving directions. Jenny Holzer positioned her Truisms inside the Spectacolor board, transforming one of New York's most prominent commercial facades into a vehicle for provocative statements.

This gesture was striking because Holzer adopted the visual conventions of advertising—matching the scale, motion, and glow of the billboard—while delivering unsettling, short statements instead of consumer goods. For a few moments, a space built strictly for commerce became a place to encounter language.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

More than forty years later, Holzer's Wrong Answers exhibition at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto revisits these concepts within a radically altered media landscape. Today, screens are no longer concentrated in isolated hubs; they are embedded in buildings, streets, public transit, and the smartphones we carry everywhere.

Holzer's journey began back in 1977 by pasting paper Truisms across New York City streets before expanding into the Living series on bronze plaques, lending subjective observations civic authority. Her intervention reached mass communication architecture through the Messages to the Public project (1982-1990) on the Spectacolor board, lasting only seconds before commercial programming resumed.