Barbara Kruger | Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You Exhibition

Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You Exhibition, The Serpentine Gallery, London. Visited: 12 March 2024.

The exhibition was somewhat smaller than I had imagined. I think having seen so many of her large-scale works online I had arrived with pre-conceived notions that the exhibition would have been bigger, larger than life and a little more ‘in your face’. Whilst much of her work was scaled to be very large on screen and a whole room (albeit a smallish one) had been transformed, with the walls wrapped in her text. I was for some reason, expecting it to be even bigger.

I should add that I’d never visited The Serpentine Gallery before, if I had, my expectations would have undoubtedly been different. Anyhow, this is not a criticism of the work or the exhibition, far from it. I simply find it interesting what expectations we bring with us when we view art. The fact I expected Kruger’s work to be more ‘in your face’ probably speaks a lot to what I love and admire about her work. I love the boldness of it. I love how her work confronts us. I love how in your face she is!

Kruger, Barabara. Untitled [Forever] 2017

Kruger is notorious for questioning and challenging societal norms. She often asks us to question the ways in which we ourselves are complicit in giving oxygen to them. She challenges us to question how we comply with and aspire to different social norms/expectations and whether or not we’ve ever stopped to consider if they are something we personally agree with and value. Thus making us aware of the many ways in which social norms are so ingrained, that we’re not even conscious of them.

“Kruger doesn’t instruct us on what position to take so much as reveal how positions are made: what we take to be our naturally or innately personal positons and identites are, in fact, publically constructed. Her work demands that each of us recognise the fact that our identities and positions, our mark of difference from one another in terms of gender, class, race, age, religion etc. are defined within the structuring powers of language image and space, that is, cultural systems of representation.” [Farrell, R: 2021]

In the past, Kruger’s work has explored topics such as gender, power and consumerism. In this exhibition, the focus is moved towards our experiences online and how online spaces are shaping culture and society.

Untitled [That’s The Way We Do It] 2011/2020 & Untitled [I Shop Therefore I Am] 1987/2019

Upon entering the exhibition you are faced with Kruger’s video installation of I Shop Therefore I am. This is a re-worked version of her past cut-and-paste style piece that has been reconfigured into an animated video. Kruger’s work has evolved over the decades to mimic what we are used to seeing in the media we consume.

As we have moved away from magazines and towards the popular video formats found on social media, Kruger has done the same. She calls these ‘replays’ and continues to explore through them, the power of language and image and how culture and meaning are constructed. This work plays on the words of philosopher Descartes who famously quoted “I think therefore I am” and looks at how modern culture has shifted how we perceive ourselves our identity and our aspirations/purpose. In the 1600s ‘to think’ meant that we existed, thinking was enough. In modern society, Kruger poses the idea that our existence is felt and experienced through shopping and consumerism. Through consumption, we repeatedly prove our existence within modern culture as we try to attain or achieve an identity, idealised way of life or status.

Untitled [That’s The Way We Do It] 2011/2020

The works surrounding the video installation are all works that speak of appropriation. Upon closer inspection, we can see works which have been created and shared on the internet, copying Kruger’s ideas and style. She then takes these images and collages them herself re-appropriating the work to create something that speaks to the act of appropriation. It should also be noted that many of Kruger’s original works were appropriated images overlayed with text so this is a sort of evolution in the art of appropriation.

Untitled [That’s The Way We Do It] 2011/2020

Again this is a very current topic that Kruger is exploring and she is looking at how social media and the internet has shifted how we create and converse with each other. Technology has allowed us to take an idea from someone and copy it to create something “new” which becomes “our” creation/idea. That’s the way we do it is reflecting on this cultural shift in creating and making art and raises questions about authenticity and authorship in the digital age. It perhaps also speaks to the sheer volume of imagery we are exposed to everyday on the internet and how we navigate and consume images whilst scrolling online.

Untitled [That’s The Way We Do It] 2011/2020

Pledge, Will, Vow 1988/2020

The work I was most drawn to in the exhibition was the Three Channel video installation Pledge, Will, Vow. In this work Kruger is exploring the power of language, how it is constructed and used in mass media, pop culture and advertising, as well as in politics and formal contexts. As much of my work and research is focused on gender norms and expectations it was the Vow part of this installation that I found most compelling. In this piece, traditional marriage vows are typed on screen, pausing at certain words and offering variations on it.

The other two videos mirror this method but type out the US Pledge of Allegience and a last will and testament.

Pledge, Will, Vow 1988/2020

The words which appear on the screens feel so familiar and ingrained, we’ve heard them many times before, but have we really understood them? The wedding vows are associated with a societal aspiration and they are spoken and vowed often, perhaps without really being critically considered. They are just the words we say to reach the thing we’ve been told we should attain. We don’t question what they mean or how we might fulfil them or what they will even look like in our relationship, we simply say and perform them as an act of compliance to expectations.

The three video pieces were displayed side by side on flatscreen monitors. They were played one at a time. Whilst all three were very impactful I’m not sure, if personally, I would have been happier to see the one I was most drawn to, on it’s own. I would have really liked to have spent time with it and reflected on it, without my attention being diverted to the next screen in the sequence. Perhaps this is also part of what the work speaks to, us being so constantly bombarded with information and the next thing to achieve or attain that we never truly get chance to stop and reflect and come to our own conclusions.

In the video piece Vow, Kruger is looking at the societal norms of marriage. I believe she’s asking us to question what we aspire to and how we comply to these norms without consciously thinking about them, or critically considering why it is we want to achieve the things that society has told us to achieve.

Through this performance of social norms and social narratives are we unconsciously buying into ideas and ways of being and behaviours that we don’t critically think about and just blindly enter into without questioning?

I think Kruger is asking us to really look at the vows and consciously consider what the vows mean. What are we really signing up to? Are we aware of what we’re speaking of and vowing to do when we say them? Do we really look at them and critically consider them and fundamentally agree and believe them? Or are we just performing them as part of a social norm? And, if we are just performing them as part of a social norm and if marriage is just a social norm, then what weight, value and benefit does marriage have for individuals beyond social currency?

Looking at the substitution of words in the piece, I think Kruger reflects on the fact that for many people marriage doesn’t live up to the vows and the aspirations sold to us. The words substituted, represent the reality of what many experience as marriage. Even though the vows might not be consciously considered, and perhaps because they’re not consciously considered, marriage often lives up to other norms and expectations that society also has of marriage, such as the gender imbalances that often exist and survive within heterosexual marriage. There are many outdated, ‘traditional’ ideas of what being in a marriage looks like and many behaviours that take place within the confines of a marriage are often seen as expected or are excused without them really being questioned or challenged.

Marriage, for many, becomes a place of entrapment, a place of abuse and control. Marriage can be seen as a kind of container, for many ways of being and behaviours that aren’t desirable, that we wouldn’t really want to contractually enter into, and yet we continue to do so willingly.

So in this piece, Kruger questions our desires to be married and questions what marriage is and the norms that are expected once we are married. How much is endured and put up with because of these norms and expectations?

Perhaps as a society, we need to challenge what the idea of marriage is, what it’s about, what happens inside of it and whether it still has value in its current form or whether marriage is something to be aspired to at all.

Untitled [No Comment] 2022

This was an interesting piece in the exhibition. On a large screen, the viewer is bombarded with images and audio, many from social media networks such as TikTok and Instagram. There’s a video of a talking cat, hair braiding demonstrations and blurred-out selfies woven amongst Kruger’s signature text. Statements and quotes by French philosopher Voltaire and the rapper Kendrick Lamar are amongst some of the texts included.

The mix of media and the speed at which it is served highlights how we consume media these days, particularly whilst scrolling on social networks. It’s an assault on the senses and there’s something about the different format through which we’re viewing it (in a gallery setting on a giant screen) that somehow emphasises that which we have perhaps acclimatised to when on the tiny screens in our hands.

On our phones, we might be able to numb ourselves to the content or tune out the noise, but in an exhibition, we’ve chosen to sit and engage with it. It made me think about how in centuries to come, when people look back in history to see how we spent our downtime, they’ll be utterly confused by the content we both created and consumed in this current era of the internet.

The work poses questions about power, value, capital and ego. As we watch and recognise all these mini snippets of life from our online world, in this new environment, we can see the absurdity of it. We can see all that we consume over and over again in daily life, we can see how we’re sold to and influenced. It’s unsettling to the say the least.

Untitled [Forever] 2017

In a small room at the back of the gallery, there is Kruger’s “room-wrap” of text. Incredibly, this part of the exhibition is installed specific to each site where the exhibition travels. I’ve seen this room-wrap online as it was displayed in other institutions and it was interesting to see how it was adapted to this smaller space. A quote from George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984 is installed on the floor with further text on the walls. The textual work finishes with a variation of the exhibition’s title “THIS IS ABOUT YOU, I MEAN ME, I MEAN YOU.

Untitled [Forever] 2017

The immersive-ness of being enveloped in the text is what makes an impact when entering the room. In this venue, as you walk into the room, the text-covered walls are opposite and to your right with a long line of windows to the left. I couldn’t help but wonder how much more impact the work would have had in a venue where the installation was fully boxed in by four walls of text.

By standing in the room we are physically taking on a position in respect of the walls of text around us. We are physically interacting with the words and walking over the quote “IF YOU WANT A PICTURE OF THE FUTURE, IMAGINE A BOOT STAMPING ON A HUMAN FACE, FOREVER.” by George Orwell. 

On the largest wall is a text piece that appears distorted as if looking through a looking glass. It reads: YOU. YOU ARE HERE, LOOKING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, DARKLY. SEEING THE UNSEEN, THE INVISIBLE, THE BARELY THERE. YOU. WHOEVER YOU ARE. WHEREVER YOU ARE. ETCHED IN MEMORY. UNTIL YOU, THE LOOKER, IS GONE. UNSEEN. NO MORE. YOU TOO.  As is common in Kruger’s work she is directly addressing the viewer, challenging them, drawing attention to their gaze and asking them to consider their position in relation to the work and asking them what will happen when they walk away, will the imagery they’ve looked at become just more consumed visuals to be forgotten as if never seen at all?

Untitled [Your Body is a Battleground] 1989/2019

Kruger’s iconic work Your Body Is A Battleground has been transformed into a digital moving image format for this piece. The original work is fragmented into puzzle pieces which move around the screen and fall into place to reveal the completed image.

Untitled [Your Body is a Battleground] 1989/2019

The image was originally created as a poster to support a women’s march to support reproductive freedoms in Washington in 1989. The image has resurfaced again recently in light of the Roe v Wade ruling in the states. By dividing the face into two halves with inverted colours Kruger is playing with the visual language of division and opposition.

Kruger says, “Anyone shocked by what is happening [in the world] now has not been paying attention. YOUR BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND, still.

Silent Writings 2009/2024

Every Monday, 4 March – 22 April 2024, 6 – 9pm. Outernet, The Now Building, Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 8LH

‘The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he is.’ Karl Kraus

Final Thoughts

A student in a webinar I ran recently said that Kruger’s work, for her, took too long and too much effort to work out and she prefers something a little easier to understand and more quickly digest. I think, on reflection, that is what I love about Kruger’s work. It takes a while to work out. I have to slow down and spend time with it to really critically analyse what it is I’m looking at and the potential messages within it. I think, perhaps, this is the whole point of some of Kruger’s work, especially her later pieces. We have grown so accustomed to the fast-paced consumption of images and information, that we don’t allow ourselves the luxury to stop and think and work out what we make of things. We have become passive consumers. I really enjoy how engaging I find Kruger’s work and I appreciate that it slows me down and poses questions that don’t always have an immediate response.

I have also been considering how Kruger’s iconic style is more relevant now than ever. The bold black and white images speak of polarised views and the flashes of red evoke a sense of anger, fear or anxiety as we live in a world that seems increasingly unstable. The internet has undoubtedly fuelled this polarization and Kruger’s latest work speaks to that. The current state of the world and politics has been massively influenced by the language used in the media and on the internet. People consume information (much of which lacks truth and integrity) that could be very different from a neighbour with opposing views, fuelling polarised arguments and an inability to see the nuance, humanity and common ground in a situation. Kruger’s work remains as significant as ever and this exhibition is merely the latest evolution of the messages Kruger has long since spoken of.