"I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't."

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey) is an American conceptual artist whose bold graphic work combining found photographs and declarative text has become an iconic visual language of contemporary art. After studying at Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design, Kruger began her career as a graphic designer at Condé Nast publications, including Mademoiselle magazine, where she developed the distinctive visual strategies that would later define her artistic practice. This commercial design background provided crucial training in typography, image editing, and the visual language of advertising that she would later appropriate and subvert in her fine art work.

Kruger's breakthrough came in the early 1980s with her signature style combining black-and-white photographs appropriated from mid-century American print media with confrontational text in white Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed font against red background bars. Works like "Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face)" (1981) and "Untitled (I shop therefore I am)" (1987) established her distinctive approach of addressing viewers directly through pronouns like "you," "your," "we," and "they," creating an immediate confrontation with issues of power, identity, consumption, and gender. These works simultaneously critique advertising's manipulative strategies while employing its visual effectiveness to deliver pointed sociopolitical messages.

Beyond her iconic photo-text works, Kruger's practice has expanded to encompass large-scale installations that transform exhibition spaces into immersive textual environments, video works addressing social and political issues, and public projects including billboards, bus wraps, and architectural interventions. Her recent work has adapted to digital media contexts while maintaining her distinctive confrontational approach. Throughout her career, Kruger has consistently engaged with how images and language construct and control social identity, using the visual strategies of mass media to question systems of power, consumerism, and representation. Working primarily between Los Angeles and New York, Kruger has maintained her position as one of the most influential and recognizable conceptual artists of her generation, whose instantly identifiable visual style has permeated both fine art and popular culture.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (It's a small world but not if you have to clean it), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles © Barbara Kruger