Here to Empower

Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything 1987/2014 The future belongs to those who can see it 1997 Money can buy you love 1985

           On august 20th, 2012 the  Smithonian's Hirshhorn museum opened Barbara Kruger's exhibition "Belief + Doubt" which filled the entire lower level lobby and extended into the bookstore. The entire 6,700 square feet of the gallery was covered with Kruger's work in red, black, and white color scheme. The purpose of this project was to raise doubt and awareness to the public about social and political issues through rhetorical questions and statements.  Her  provocative  art  interrogates the country's economic and governmental  circumstances.  Some of the works included "Who is beyond is the law?", "Who speaks?", and "Who is silent?" among others. 

                                                    National Gallery of Art 9/30/2016                Kruger new she was not cut out to work for magazines because she could not always fulfill the needs of others. She is particularly known for feminist, modern, contemporary, and conceptual artwork. Recognized as a significant artist in history, her work is daring, powerful, and outspoken. Her combination of images, humor, and the topics she touches upon include oppression, satire, and hypocrisy.

Picture/Readings      Her passion for abstract photography and captions led to the book she published " Picture/Readings " in 1978 which includes a collection of her works. The photographs were primarily taken in California and Florida from the perspective of anyone passing by, and included dramatic scenes reflecting her feminist conscience. The description that goes with each image is a short story about a women and the experience she is going through according to the image.The photographs rarely include indication of location and primarily focus on objects such as windows, corners, and roofs. The work was exhibited in the Mary Boone Gallery from November 1, 2007 up until December 22, 2007. 

Barbara Kruger Photographed in her New York Studio             Born January 26th 1945 in Newark, New Jersey into a middle class home, the artist grew up as a single child. Her mother was a legal secretary and her father a chemical technician. She attended Syracuse University and  Parsons School of Design where she received  significant influence, guidance, and training to become an editor and designer for a magazine but, then moved on to pursue a career in art. She began to write poetry, narratives, and performed her own work as well. After dabbling with painting  for a while she decided it was not something she was interested in and decided to go back to focusing on pictures and captions. 

Barbara Kruger 1989   Things change and work changes. Right now I like the idea of enveloping a space and getting messages across that connect to the world in ways that seem familiar but are different. I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices. Look, we're all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I've chosen to make my work about that insanity. I think that art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook. I'm trying to be affective, to suggest changes, and to resist what I feel are the tyrannies of social life on a certain level. I didn't fi...