Direct, daring, acerbic and witty, Kruger’s work has never shied away from interrogating our most conventional beliefs or the dogmas of our present age. Starting with Untitled (Who?) (2020), her most recent work on the façade of the Los Angeles gallery, the online exhibition Questions surveys some of her most important text-based, large-scale installations in the US and across the world.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Who?), installation view, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, November 6, 2020–January 8, 2021. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer

 

Untitled (Who?) will occupy the facade of Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles, until January 15, 2021. Untitled (Who?) asks, in English and Spanish, “WHO DO YOU BELIEVE?” “WHO DO YOU HURT?” “WHO DO YOU HATE?” “¿QUIÉN ES EL QUE AMAS?” Amid the Presidential election and an era of increasingly divisive political rhetoric in America and beyond, as well as ongoing debates about racism and a global pandemic, Kruger’s questions take on a heightened significance.

 

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We don't need another hero), installation view,
Billboard project, Artangel, London, 1986

The task of asking difficult questions in a public setting, whether implied or direct, has always been at the core of Kruger’s oeuvre. While the early work We don’t need another hero (1986) didn’t ask a question directly, it nevertheless challenged thousands of pedestrians who would have encountered the mysterious billboard where they might normally expect an advertisement. A nostalgic, apple-pie boy flexes his bicep, accompanied by a girl who reaches out to touch his arm, with an expression of surprise, or perhaps ironic awe. Mounted on seventeen billboards in fourteen cities across the UK and Ireland in January and February 1987, the work confronted the public with what looked like propaganda promoting cliched gender roles, overlaid by a command to reject the values promulgated by the image.

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We don't need another hero), installation view,
Billboard project, Artangel, London, 1986

The task of asking difficult questions in a public setting, whether implied or direct, has always been at the core of Kruger’s oeuvre. While the early work We don’t need another hero (1986) didn’t ask a question directly, it nevertheless challenged thousands of pedestrians who would have encountered the mysterious billboard where they might normally expect an advertisement. A nostalgic, apple-pie boy flexes his bicep, accompanied by a girl who reaches out to touch his arm, with an expression of surprise, or perhaps ironic awe. Mounted on seventeen billboards in fourteen cities across the UK and Ireland in January and February 1987, the work confronted the public with what looked like propaganda promoting cliched gender roles, overlaid by a command to reject the values promulgated by the image.

“My work has always been about power and control and bodies and money and all that kind of stuff.” –Barbara Kruger

One of Kruger’s best known works, Untitled (Your body is a battleground) Poster for Arts Pro-Choice art sale and benefit for the National Abortion Rights Action League, New York City (1990) was designed for the 1989 Women’s March on Washington in support of legal abortion. In 1990 the posters were fly-posted across New York City. A direct, activist intervention in a civic space, Kruger’s characteristic black-and-white image overlaid with a slogan highlighted an acutely divisive subject in American politics at the time—and still today, if not an enduring issue across the globe.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1990
Poster for Arts Pro-Choice art sale and benefit for the National Abortion Rights Action League, New York City

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1990
Poster for Arts Pro-Choice art sale and benefit for the National Abortion Rights Action League, New York City

Barbara Kruger – Questions
Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1990
Poster for Arts Pro-Choice art sale and benefit for the National Abortion Rights Action League, New York City

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One of Kruger’s best known works, Untitled (Your body is a battleground) Poster for Arts Pro-Choice art sale and benefit for the National Abortion Rights Action League, New York City (1990) was designed for the 1989 Women’s March on Washington in support of legal abortion. In 1990 the posters were fly-posted across New York City. A direct, activist intervention in a civic space, Kruger’s characteristic black-and-white image overlaid with a slogan highlighted an acutely divisive subject in American politics at the time—and still today, if not an enduring issue across the globe.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 1990/2018
Monumental wall work
South wall of the Temporary Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Reinstallation at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, October 20, 2018–November 30, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 1990/2018
Monumental wall work
South wall of the Temporary Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Reinstallation at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, October 20, 2018–November 30, 2020

Details
Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 1990/2018
Monumental wall work
South wall of the Temporary Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Reinstallation at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, October 20, 2018–November 30, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 1990/2018
Monumental wall work
South wall of the Temporary Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Reinstallation at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, October 20, 2018–November 30, 2020

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The late 1980s and early 1990s was a tumultuous era in the US, particularly an ongoing dispute between religious conservatives and artists that spawned the term “culture wars.” It was this situation that spurred Kruger to make what was at the time her largest work to date, Questions (1990/2018), which was installed across an entire wall of MOCA, Los Angeles. The questions emblazoned on the wall –  such as WHO IS FREE TO CHOOSE? WHO DOES TIME? WHO IS BEYOND THE LAW? WHO IS BOUGHT AND SOLD? –  offered a bold challenge to the religious right, who at the time were attacking the work of artists they considered amoral. Yet that fight has shown few signs of fading over the past 30 years, and Kruger revived the work in 2018, reinstalling it on the north façade of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA amidst the new censorious climate of the alt-right, Trumpian rhetoric and other forces of oppression. The work will remain in place through November 2020.

 

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Kunst-Station St. Peter in Köln, installation view, St. Peter's Church, Cologne, 2003

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Kunst-Station St. Peter in Köln, installation view, St. Peter's Church, Cologne, 2003

Kruger is always alert to setting, and the same group of questions can resonate in different ways depending on the context in which they are installed. In 2003, Kruger redeployed some of the same questions she used on the façade of MoCA on the floor of St. Peter’s Church, Cologne, with an enormous photograph of a woman’s hands, her hands folded together in prayer. Across the space between her wrists, in her trademark white-on-red typography, there were four questions:

Wer salutiert am längsten? [Who salutes longest?]
Wer betet am lautesten? [Who prays loudest?]
Wer stirbt zuerst? [Who dies first?]
Wer lacht zuletzt? [Who laughs last?]

Presented in the hushed, spiritual setting of a Gothic church, the combination of the hands and the questions appeared less forthrightly political and more of a call to balance and compassion.

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Kunst-Station St. Peter in Köln, installation view, St. Peter's Church, Cologne, 2003

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Kunst-Station St. Peter in Köln, installation view, St. Peter's Church, Cologne, 2003

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Kruger is always alert to setting, and the same group of questions can resonate in different ways depending on the context in which they are installed. In 2003, Kruger redeployed some of the same questions she used on the façade of MoCA on the floor of St. Peter’s Church, Cologne, with an enormous photograph of a woman’s hands, her hands folded together in prayer. Across the space between her wrists, in her trademark white-on-red typography, there were four questions:

Wer salutiert am längsten? [Who salutes longest?]
Wer betet am lautesten? [Who prays loudest?]
Wer stirbt zuerst? [Who dies first?]
Wer lacht zuletzt? [Who laughs last?]

Presented in the hushed, spiritual setting of a Gothic church, the combination of the hands and the questions appeared less forthrightly political and more of a call to balance and compassion.

A decade later in the same German city, Kruger brought a similar set of questions directly to the street, enwrapping a Cologne city bus in a series of questions and statements, including WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? Bus Wrap travelled through the city as a kind of mobile call to prayer or expression of empathy for the residents of Cologne.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Bus Wrap, installation view, Museum Ludwig / Kölner Verkehrsbetriebe-AG, Cologne, Germany, 2013

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Bus Wrap, installation view, Museum Ludwig / Kölner Verkehrsbetriebe-AG, Cologne, Germany, 2013

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Bus Wrap, installation view, Museum Ludwig / Kölner Verkehrsbetriebe-AG, Cologne, Germany, 2013

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Bus Wrap, installation view, Museum Ludwig / Kölner Verkehrsbetriebe-AG, Cologne, Germany, 2013

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Bus Wrap, installation view, Museum Ludwig / Kölner Verkehrsbetriebe-AG, Cologne, Germany, 2013

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Bus Wrap, installation view, Museum Ludwig / Kölner Verkehrsbetriebe-AG, Cologne, Germany, 2013

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A decade later in the same German city, Kruger brought a similar set of questions directly to the street, enwrapping a Cologne city bus in a series of questions and statements, including WHERE ARE YOU GOING? WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? Bus Wrap travelled through the city as a kind of mobile call to prayer or expression of empathy for the residents of Cologne.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Empatia), installation view, El Metro de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2016

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Empatia), installation view, El Metro de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2016

Public transportation was also the site of a project in Mexico City, when Kruger emblazoned a tunnel in the city’s Metro Bellas Artes subway station with her usual repertoire of statements and questions. Printed in the colors of the Mexican flag, Untitled (Empatia) greeted commuters with enormous letters on all sides, not least the ceiling. A cacophony of words and letters encircled the crowds as they strode through the nondescript passageways, a reflection of the hectic atmosphere of the setting.

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Empatia), installation view, El Metro de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2016

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Empatia), installation view, El Metro de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2016

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Public transportation was also the site of a project in Mexico City, when Kruger emblazoned a tunnel in the city’s Metro Bellas Artes subway station with her usual repertoire of statements and questions. Printed in the colors of the Mexican flag, Untitled (Empatia) greeted commuters with enormous letters on all sides, not least the ceiling. A cacophony of words and letters encircled the crowds as they strode through the nondescript passageways, a reflection of the hectic atmosphere of the setting.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Skate), site-specific installation, Coleman Skatepark, Manhattan, New York, 2017. Commissioned by PERFORMA

 

A commission from PERFORMA in 2017 brought Kruger’s project to a skate park under the Manhattan bridge. Here, in a crucible of youth culture, the artist’s questions intertwined with the swift movements of the skateboarders. Again, the context transformed the impact of the artist’s questions. Where we would normally expect to see graffiti tags, we discover instead a set of questions that might occupy the mind of a teenager. Questions such as WHOSE HOPES? or WHOSE VALUES? or slogans such as WANT IT. NEED IT. BUY IT. Call out in red and white, amidst the ramps and curves of the skate park, as if Kruger’s words expressed the thoughts and worries of the skaters themselves.

 

Barbara Kruger’s appetite to ask tough questions and support political causes remains undimmed, and she continues to alter the very fabric of urban spaces, especially in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles, with a range of demanding installations. In 2017, she mounted the question CAN MONEY BUY YOU LOVE? in vast letters across the exterior of the Beverly Center, a conspicuous interrogation of consumerism on the façade of one of the city’s more prominent shopping centers.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Can money buy you love?), 2017
Billboard for Beverly Center, Los Angeles
1800 cm high
708 5/8 inches high

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Can money buy you love?), 2017
Billboard for Beverly Center, Los Angeles
1800 cm high
708 5/8 inches high

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Barbara Kruger’s appetite to ask tough questions and support political causes remains undimmed, and she continues to alter the very fabric of urban spaces, especially in her adopted hometown of Los Angeles, with a range of demanding installations. In 2017, she mounted the question CAN MONEY BUY YOU LOVE? in vast letters across the exterior of the Beverly Center, a conspicuous interrogation of consumerism on the façade of one of the city’s more prominent shopping centers.

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Details
Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Questions), 2020
20 questions displayed on digital billboards, light pole banners, murals, print and digital media around Los Angeles for Frieze art week
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen, 2020, All Rights Reserved

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“I wish that the issues I’m dealing with weren’t pertinent. But unfortunately, these issues of power and control and disaster are ongoing.” –Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

For Frieze Los Angeles 2019, Untitled (Questions) (2019) saw dozens of eye-catching green stickers pop up seemingly at random on sidewalks and surfaces near a dozen Los Angeles art spaces, asking pedestrians WHO WILL WRITE THE HISTORY OF TEARS? and ARE YOU HUNGRY? alongside other questions. Untitled (Who is housed when money talks?) (2020) was created for the Rental Affordability Act campaign headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in January 2020 in response to the city’s escalating homelessness and housing crisis. Her questions were then revived and expanded to monumental effect the following month for Frieze Los Angeles 2020. Untitled (Questions) (2020) featured installations across LA on street banners, billboards and walls, and at Union Station and the Banc of California Stadium, among other prominent locations. Once again permeating public spaces from transportation hubs to sports arenas to major traffic intersections, Kruger’s questions usurped the usual locus of commercialism and advertising, and—as so many of her works have done before—urged viewers from all walks of life, including herself, to formulate their own answers to them.

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Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

Barbara Kruger – Questions

Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Who is housed when money talks) Project for AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Los Angeles, 2020

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For Frieze Los Angeles 2019, Untitled (Questions) (2019) saw dozens of eye-catching green stickers pop up seemingly at random on sidewalks and surfaces near a dozen Los Angeles art spaces, asking pedestrians WHO WILL WRITE THE HISTORY OF TEARS? and ARE YOU HUNGRY? alongside other questions. Untitled (Who is housed when money talks?) (2020) was created for the Rental Affordability Act campaign headquarters on Sunset Boulevard in January 2020 in response to the city’s escalating homelessness and housing crisis. Her questions were then revived and expanded to monumental effect the following month for Frieze Los Angeles 2020. Untitled (Questions) (2020) featured installations across LA on street banners, billboards and walls, and at Union Station and the Banc of California Stadium, among other prominent locations. Once again permeating public spaces from transportation hubs to sports arenas to major traffic intersections, Kruger’s questions usurped the usual locus of commercialism and advertising, and—as so many of her works have done before—urged viewers from all walks of life, including herself, to formulate their own answers to them.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 2019, Project for Frieze Los Angeles