Barbara Kruger: Poetic Justice
Barbara Kruger, Pledge, Vow, 1988/2020
Lingfei Ren: The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade after 49 years. Many people posted your Untitled (Your body is a battleground) image on social media as a protest against the Supreme Court’s new decision. How do you feel about the message being delivered now compared to when you first made it?
Barbara Kruger: The struggles around women’s reproductive rights have been ongoing and will continue to proceed in fits and starts. The ability to control pregnancy and childbirth determines how a life is lived: whether one has agency over the arc of a life span or whether it is determined by the customs and demands of patriarchal hierarchies. The victories in this struggle have been emancipating but will always be met with brutal backlash, fear, and grievance. We see how this fear of losing power is being acted out globally around many issues regarding gender, race, economic class, land rights, the rethinking of histories, the environment, and the rise of global populisms.
Lingfei: Has this work been used in any other women’s rights campaigns outside the United States?
Barbara: I produced the work as a subway poster in Berlin in 1990 and as a poster in Poland in 1991, but the text was translated at each site. I try to make work about how we are to one another. Many of my works address issues of power, control, adoration, pleasure, and value. And these public works have been seen in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France, Korea, and other contexts. But what is crucial to me is that the work not be touristic, but appear in sites where the issues of gender control and subjugation are at stake. Which seems, unfortunately, to be everywhere. And if this public commentary is not mine, hopefully it is produced by other artists everywhere who have chosen to comment and intervene in these urgent issues.
Lingfei: At David Zwirner, we see a pile of jigsaw puzzles piecing themselves together into “Your body is a battleground.” The phrase rapidly changes to “My body is money,” “Your heart is broken,” “My coffee is a motorboat,” and so on, with a scary pounding sound echoing in the gallery. What are the intentions of the new phrases and the choices of sound effects and animations?
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989/2019
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989/2019
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989/2019
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989/2019
Barbara: The recent moving images and their sonic effects hopefully expand the power of these picturings, allowing for further commentary and a different kind of reception. I’m aware of how attention spans have been altered and my hope is that these works engage the viewer in compelling ways. There are also a number of new multi-channel videos in the Zwirner show which attempt to merge the complications of commentary with the pleasures of visual and sonic seduction. I think one of the major changes in my work over the years has been the ability to spatialize my practice: to use digital capabilities to upscale the work and to engage sites architecturally. My interest in the built environment and its ability to construct and contain us has been long-standing.
Lingfei: At David Zwirner, in the installation of Untitled (I shop therefore I am), we see huge assemblages on the walls with a dazzling amount of mass culture images and catchphrases. Could you talk about the making of the original one and its variations?
Barbara: That installation “Untitled (That’s the way we do it)” combines the LED remaking of “I Shop Therefore I Am” with a gathering of hundreds of images that I found online that engage certain stylistics of my work. I’ve created none of those images. I’ve also collected images of merch found on Red Bubble and included them. The virality of today’s image and info-flow is instantaneous and seemingly never-ending. I think that my early jobs as an editorial designer helped me develop fluency in the delivery of images and words. And how the economy of that delivery is pivotal. And, of course, the speed of delivery and reception has accelerated mightily. Our online lives can produce pleasure and pain, are both liberatory and shaming, and have the power to remake or end worlds and lives in an instant.
FIN
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (That’s the way we do it), 2011/2020
Barbara Kruger, Installation view, Barbara Kruger, David Zwirner, New York, 2022
