Barbara Kruger @ The Serpentine Gallery
1st Feb 2024 – 17th Mar 2024
Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You.
If you think Barbara Kruger’s work often resembles the cover of a magazine, you wouldn’t be wrong. Images overlaid with text, come straight out of the world of advertising and graphic design and this is not by chance, for Kruger, before becoming an artist, worked as a graphic designer. The uncluttered image, the crisp, easy to read text, the bold use of colour are all recurring features of her work. But therein the similarities end. Whilst the purpose of advertising in a Capitalist society is to promote commodity fetishism and the belief that each commodity is virtually essential to life itself, Kruger turns that narrative completely on its head.
Kruger opts to address issues around the mechanisms of power, gender, class and identity.
The French theorist Roland Barthes in his seminal text “Death of the Author”, argued that once a text is written, that the author places any meaning into the hands of the audience. These interpretations can therefore take a myriad of forms as, by its very nature, each audience member will come with their own experiences. Kruger clearly doesn’t agree to this surrendering of intent as her work although an exploration of language and meaning narrows the possibilities for ambiguity in the eyes of the viewer.
Many of the works shown originated in the 80’s and 90’s. What Kruger has done is modify them for the digital age. Originally a static poster, each work is now presented in electronic billboard format with a rapid fire of changing text. The text a continued investigation into the construction of meaning and culture.
Below are some of the key works:
‘I Shop Therefore I Am’ (1987/2019)
‘I Shop Therefore I Am’
A play on René Descates’ “I Think Therefore I Am”, this work is a blistering comment on the power of the perceived need to be in a constant state of consumption.
The alternative words are
I shop therefore I hoard
I need therefore I shop
I love therefore I need
I die therefore I was
‘Your Body is a Battleground’ (1989/2019)
‘Your Body is a Battleground’
Another of Kruger’s most famous pieces. Created originally as a poster for the Women’s March on Washington in 1989 in support of the reproductive rights of women. The face split in two halves speaks of division and with the contrasting positive and negative halves, Kruger alludes to the positive and negative stances of the political debate surrounding who should be in control of a woman’s body. Depressingly, since then the body has become an even bigger battleground.
The alternative words are
My body is money
Your body is a piece of fruit
My coffee is a motorboat
Your will is bought and sold
My beliefs are short and sweet
Your humility is bullshit
‘Our People Are Better Than Your People’ (1994)
‘Our People Are Better Than Your People’
Essential to the power of difference is the belief that we are not the same, that somehow we are superior. It is this othering of others that facilitated Colonialism and slavery in the past and still breeds the superiority complex in Western Nations over those of the Global South. Kruger uses the language of the playground boast to highlight what we are drip fed, through power mechanisms such as the media, on a daily basis.
This exhibition, the first major retrospective of Kruger’s work in over twenty years in the UK, delivered on all fronts. The instantly recognisable style of her work has lost none of its power. In fact, much of what she says is even more pertinent in today’s world than it was thirty or forty years ago. By anchoring her practice in the language of advertising, Kruger demonstrates her ability to adapt her works to the digital age without compromising on content. Excellent.