Barbara Kruger
American, born 1945
We Will Not Become What We Mean to You
INV-1842
Barbara Kruger
American, born 19451983
We Will Not Become What We Mean to You
Barbara Kruger American, born 1945 →photographphotography
Date
1983
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
184 × 121 × 5 cm (72 1/2 × 48 × 2 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Susan and Lewis Manilow
Barbara Kruger’s photo- and text-based images disrupt representations of power generated by commercial media, particularly those that affect women. Informed by her earlier profession as a graphic designer, her work typically combines images and iconography appropriated from 1940s and 1950s American film, television, and advertising with blunt slogans rife with insinuation. Kruger explained, “I’m interested in how identities are constructed, how stereotypes are formed, how narratives sort of congeal and become history.” Here the artist removed the identifying features of the figure and used the pronouns we and you to implicate the viewer, regardless of gender, in the objectification of this anonymous woman.
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