Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You

American artist Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey, USA) is widely known for her impactful work with images and words. Drawing from an early career as a graphic designer for magazines, Kruger developed an iconic visual language that frequently borrows from the techniques and aesthetics of advertising and other media. Since the 1970s, her artworks have continually explored complex mechanisms of power, gender, class, consumerism, and capital.

Thinking of ~~You~~. I Mean Me. I Mean You. at Serpentine South is Kruger’s first solo institutional show in London in over twenty years. It features a unique selection of installations alongside moving image works and multiple soundscapes. The exhibition is the UK premiere of Untitled (No Comment) (2020). This immersive three-channel video installation explores contemporary modes of creating and consuming content online. In the work, Kruger combines text, audio clips, and a barrage of found images and memes, ranging from blurred-out selfies to animated photos of cats.

The exhibition also features recent video reconfigurations – or, as the artist calls them, replays – of several of Kruger’s most iconic pieces from the 1980s, including Untitled (I shop therefore I am) (1987) and Untitled (Your body is a battleground) (1989). Over decades, Kruger has presented her work across various spaces and forms, including on buildings, billboards, hoardings, buses, and skate parks. For this exhibition, the artist has adapted works, which were recently presented at museums in the United States, to specific locations within Serpentine, both indoors and outdoors.