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BARBARA KRUGER
(American, born 1945)

Barbara Kruger uses the visual language of advertising art to expose the myriad ways in which the media influences our culture and values. For the last two decades, Kruger has been pairing photographs found in newspapers and magazines with provocative texts. Sometimes the text comments on what is happening in the image. Sometimes the text undercuts the image, revealing both the power and the deceit inherent in the idea being portrayed. The two works by Kruger in the Speed’s collection offer commentary on the numbing effects of our media-saturated society and the dangers of conformity.

The figure in Think Like Us is undergoing some sort of medical procedure: her eye is being injected with a substance while she lies passively still, just as we daily absorb the plethora of images generated by television, movies, and more. The hysterical, laughing mouth in Talk Like Us thrusts itself—and its tongue—into the viewer’s space, insisting on conformity. The loud colors in these images amplify their demand for the sacrifice of individual ideas and values. When the mind is empty and the sense of self displaced, Kruger seems to be saying, the media will take over and our self-image will merge with whatever is onscreen or in print.

To see works by Barbara Kruger in the collection of the University of Kentucky Art Museum, click here.