'The right has no trouble speaking their rage': artist Barbara Kruger on America in crisis

February 19, 2020

Kruger, internationally known for her distinctive image and text pieces, has been active in a range of fields, including video and audio installation, photography, sculpture, architecture, and graphic design as well as in critical writing, curatorship, and various forms of public advocacy. In 2005, Kruger was included in The Experience of Art at the Venice Biennale and was the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

A photographic silkscreen print by Kruger titled I Shop Therefore I Am at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington DC. Photograph: Robert Alexander/Getty Images

“Life is such a crapshoot,” says the artist Barbara Kruger. “It’s full of fortuitous moments and horrible tragedies – and everything in between.”

For this week’s Frieze art fair in Los Angeles, the conceptual artist has plastered the city with banners, billboards, and stickers emblazoned with provocative text in her signature all-caps Futura typeface. Pithy, politically charged questions such as “Who hustles” and “Who buys low” confront people traveling through downtown’s Union Station in English and Spanish. Meanwhile “Who buys the con?” addresses passersby of the 1930s-era CBS Radio building in Hollywood, which is now a working space.

Kruger’s 20 questions are in gleaming white and green ink – the color of cartoon money, envy, the cactus emoji. Though this series is an extension of Frieze, Kruger has never been to an art fair. And while this is not uncommon for some artists, it is unusual for one of her caliber to maintain such a distance from the art market. “Unfortunately I do have to sometimes show up to my own openings and dinners,” she concedes, “though I’d rather go to hell.”

Kruger is best known for creating fiercely anti-capitalist graphics that take on exploitation, class inequality, and divisive political ideologies. Before her work entered the mainstream, she was busy “sniping”, or illegally plastering her works on billboards and construction sites."— Anna Furman, Feb. 13, 2020

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the The Guardian website.
Read more about Barbara Kruger.

Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.