What a forward-looking lady. Barbara Kruger was, making huge scale graphics and photography when the YBAs were babies. She still is. You can’t ever dilute the spirit of people like Kruger.
Having cut her teeth working with luminaries like Diane Arbus, inspired by the likes of Walter Benjamin, Kruger creates unflinching, anti- capitalism work in monochrome with slogans in slashes of red. Her photography was and is similarly confrontational. She dared to call out the expectations of women as baby machines, with limited options. She refused to buy into fashion, consumerist agendas and all that reductive nonsense.
Her work is so instantly recognisable, so iconic that it’s unsurprising that she’s been plagiarized and ripped off. So it was wonderful to read about her reaction when the fashion brand Married To The Mob tried to use her work, with her slogan turned into “Supreme Bitch” and pass it off as their own. “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jerks. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce…I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement “. Gloriously, she clapped back by using a logo, even bigger, in an exhibition in 2017 after the furore. The slogan read, “WHO OWNS WHAT?” And she continues to fight the good fight. We need her now more than ever.
All work by Barbara Kruger.
Hit The North 