Barbara Kruger

For more than 40 years, Barbara Kruger has been a consistent, critical observer of the ways that images circulate through culture.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1945, she attended the School of Art at Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design in New York before accepting a position at Condé Nast in 1966. There she gained firsthand experience in the conception, creation, and circulation of consumer culture, learning strategies on how to command attention within page design that continue to inform her work today.

Overlaying images and iconography from mass-media photographs with provocative language, the artist uses direct address to undermine and expose the power dynamics of identity, desire, and consumer habits. Frequently working outside institutional spaces, Kruger traverses the public landscape in a myriad of ways: from traditional publication formats and complex video and sound installations to vast architectural interventions that transform the walls, ceilings, and floors of entire spaces. The meaning of Kruger’s works is always contextual, informed by the specific site and moment of their presentation, and she continues to adapt to and experiment with new technologies. “My work is about how we are to one another,” the artist often says, situating her work as the reflective mirror of the human condition—its beliefs and doubts, kindnesses and cruelties, and humor and empathy.

In keeping with her ongoing practice of revisiting early works in new formats, Kruger produced a new set of LED and video installations on the occasion of her 2021 solo exhibition, THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU at the Art Institute of Chicago. Through her new series of “replays,” the artist samples her own work as source material, animating iconic images from a static to moving state, while adapting the wordplay for our contemporary moment. Scaled to the size of the artist’s 1987 vinyl and amplified by the latest advances in LED technology, Untitled (I Shop Therefore I am), 1987/2019, is an extraordinary example from this monumental series.