Jenny Holzer, Abuse of Power Comes As No Surprise From the series Truisms T-shirts, 1980-Ongoing

Happy birthday to the word-wielding American artist Jenny Holzer, who turns 71 today! Here’s one of her truest “Truisms”, an ongoing series of purposefully challenging aphorisms and slogans that she first proliferated via stickers, T-shirts and posters in the late 1970s, before upping the scale and emblazoning them across vast public advertising displays. This particular shirt is pictured on the Ecuadorian-American artist Lady Pink, and was captured in New York in 1983 by Lisa Kahane. The overarching purpose of the series is to draw our attention to the “usual baloney [we] are fed” on a daily basis, Holzer has said, courtesy of the mass media and advertising that surrounds us.