Emma Johnson, Neoliberal Truisms #1 [Digitized Cherry Blossoms], 2025-2026. LED sign. 39 x 8 in.
Emma Johnson, Neoliberal Truisms #2 [99 Neoliberal Truisms], 2025-2026. LED sign. 39 x 8 in.
Emma Johnson, Neoliberal Truisms #3 [Date of stock market crashes, 1637-2025], 2025-2026. LED sign. 39 x 8 in.
I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to
determine who we are, what we want to be, and what we become.
– Barbara Kruger
I invite the audience to contemplate the normalization of neoliberal values, including postfeminism and economic precarity, in Western culture.
The written structural form of truisms makes the ideas that the words convey sound pithy, like a haiku. The familiarity of the textual form is comforting. However, this agreeable aesthetic form is juxtaposed with textual meaning that is slightly off, or even disturbing, creating a tension. The juxtaposition of a short, digestible phrase with a message that sounds familiar but isn’t quite right serves to defamiliarize the familiar. This invites the viewer to investigate societal ideas often taken for granted, e.g. patriarchal neoliberalism.
The work is informed by the style of Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and Birgit Brenner. In this way, there is already a set audience expectation of the work dictated by art history. The truisms are also reminiscent of George Orwell’s phrases in Animal Farm and 1984. Because of this history, the viewer is primed to expect irony while reading.
I wrote truisms, asked a poet to write truisms, and prompted GenAI to generate truisms. I chose to both write and generate text because I wanted to express my viewpoint, but I also wanted to use the generic algorithms of GenAI to see what a LLM would generate. GenAI adds another layer of commentary on neoliberalism and the structural control over the narratives surrounding neoliberalism that appear neutral or invisible but are embedded with unintentional cultural values.
The truisms in Neoliberal Truisms take two material forms. The LED is a direct reference to Holzer and Brenner’s work. The connotations of the LED add a layer of significance and credibility because it is an expensive medium. Therefore, whatever is displayed carries a heavier significance by its overcoming the barriers to its creation. That is, inherent in its aesthetic design is the capital needed for the object’s creation.
In addition to the 99 neoliberal truisms, the LED sign of cherry blossoms relates with Sleeping Jutta (Lost in Translation), Cherry Blossoms, and The Cherry Blossom Cycle. Likewise, the LED sign of stock market crash dates relates with the Neoliberal Loops installation video 1, visualizing those dates through image (in this case aestheticized text).
The other material form is letterpress. The juxtaposition of impersonal, computer-generated AI juxtaposed with the human hand needed to print ink on paper creates a dialog between the technological and human analog (though, the letterpress machine is also a technology). Like the LED, the letterpress process takes significant time to set up, which elevates the message presented.
While the world is becoming more visually oriented, text is still significant in mediating how individuals interpret themselves in relation to neoliberalism.
– Emma C. Johnson, 2026
Works referenced
Brenner, Birgit. “Birgit Brenner, Stay Rich, 2021.” Artsy via Galerie EIGEN + ART. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/birgit-brenner-stay-rich
Holzer, Jenny. “Jenny Holzer, Selected Works.” Krakow Witkin Gallery. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/artist/jenny_holzer/
Holzer, Jenny. “Jenny Holzer, Selections from Truisms, 1984.” Krakow Witkin Gallery. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Holzer-SelectionFromTruisms-32051.pdf
Holzer, Jenny. “Truisms, 1978-87.” Museum of Modern Art. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/63755
Truisms. X Stuart Collection, University of California, San Diego. Accessed March 14, 2026. https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/_files/truisms.pdf
Kruger, Barbara. “Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.” Museum of Modern Art. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5394
Kruger, Barbara. “Interview: Resisting Reductivism and Breaking the Bubble.” Art 21. https://art21.org/read/barbara-kruger-resisting-reductivism-breaking-the-bubble/
Kruger, Barbara. “Collection: Barbara Kruger.” Whitney Museum of American Art. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://whitney.org/collection/works/12926
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