Barbara Kruger

Barbara is a famous collage maker from America. She is famous for her layered photographs and magazine cut-outs that are communicating with the viewers and asking them questions or making statements. The phrases that she used are striking and touching and relate to the viewers with topics such as consumerism, female image, feminism, politics and celebrities. 

This image is my favourite as it speaks to community as consumers, as if we buy to live, as products change our lives and at the same time asks the question if we are dependent on objects and if objects have meanings to us. The artwork also touches the subject of adverts, how they affect us and our lives, how we construct the ideal life in our minds and how it pushes the image into our heads of how we are supposed to look, dress, our body size and shape, what is appropriate and what is accepted in today’s community.

Another image from Kruger’s work (or not) is touching the subject of religion; it seems that her work suggests a subliminal message in the similar way as advertising works with our mind. This image in particular communicates psychologically, especially with religious people, any other person knows that the message is not true, that God wouldn’t kill a kitten, but it innocently works into our minds that ‘what if he does?’ , and then every time when person would have an idea to masturbate – he would remember the kittens. Here I see a bit of humour, a silly laugh at how seriously people accept their religion and how ridiculous it sometimes is that we have to bend under some of the bible rules such as not working on Sunday (not even tidying your own house) but going to church instead and how these rules with time are pushed away and the boundaries getting wider as for some people Sundays are working days now.