Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945,Newark,New Jersey, U.S.) is an American artist who challenged cultural assumptions by manipulating images and text in her photographiccompositions.

Kruger attendedSyracuse (New York) University and continued her training in 1966 atNew York City’s Parsons School of Design. For a time she pursued a career as a graphic designer, eventually becoming chief designer atMademoiselle magazine inNew York. In the 1960s and ’70s she also explored an interest inpoetry. During these years she moved from a concentration on softsculpture (namely, woven wall hangings) andpainting tophotography.

By the late 1970s Kruger had developed her trademark style: appropriating anonymous cultural images and text—the latter often displayed in white Futura type across a red box—andjuxtaposing them in unexpected ways. In her 1989 workUntitled (Your Body Is a Battleground), for example, she employed an oversized black-and-white image of a female model’s face and divided it vertically into positive and negative halves. Placed across the image is the statement “Your body is a battleground,” by which she called into question the objectification of women and raised the issue of women’s reproductive rights, which were under threat by antiabortion legislation. Such work embodied thedeconstructivist concerns of much feminist art from the 1980s and ’90s. By manipulating and recontextualizing imagery, Kruger also sought to question the way accepted sources of power, in this case themass media, present female identity. Her grounding in thetheoretical connected her with contemporary developments inconceptual art.

While Kruger often produced her work on vinyl, she also made everyday objects and increasingly large-scale installations. In 1990 her workUntitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) (1987) appeared on shopping bags, whileUntitled (Questions), a three-story mural resembling the U.S. flag, was installed at theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (later the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA). The mural featured nine questions, including “Who is beyond the law?,” “Who does the time?,” and “Who salutes the longest?” The provocative yet abstract questions remained relevant when the mural was reinstalled in 2018–20 as theUnited States reckoned with protests over racial injustice and heightened political divisions.

Also in the 21st century, Kruger explored video as a medium, creating such works asPlenty (2008) andThe Globe Shrinks (2010). In addition, she began covering entire spaces with large text, as inBelief+Doubt (2012), an immersive installation in theHirshhorn Museum’s lower lobby and bookstore (Washington, D.C.). As part of acommission for the 2017 Performa Biennial (New York), Kruger installed works at a skate park and designed limited-editionpublic transit fare cards. She also created her first performance piece,Untitled (The Drop), a pop-up shop selling skateboards and clothing emblazoned with new and familiar slogans, including “Don’t be a jerk” and “Want it, buy it, forget it.” Many critics interpreted the piece as a parody of theskateboarding brand Supreme, which had been using Kruger’s signature white text on red for years.

(Read Tony Hawk’s Britannica entry on skateboarding.)

Kruger taught at theUniversity of California’s Berkeley,San Diego, and Los Angeles campuses. Solo exhibitions of her work were organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1983), London; the Museum of Contemporary Art (1999), Los Angeles; the Moderna Museet (2008), Stockholm; theNational Gallery of Art (2016), Washington, D.C.; and theArt Institute of Chicago (2021). She participated in theVenice Biennale in 1982 and 2005 and received the Leone d’Oro for lifetime achievement at the latter. Kruger’s work appears in the permanent collections of several major museums, including theWhitney Museum of American Art and theMuseum of Modern Art, both in New York City.

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