About This Artwork

Barbara Kruger
American, born 1945

We Will Not Become What We Mean to You, 1983

Gelatin silver print
121 x 184 x 5 cm (48 x 72 1/2 x 2 in.)
Gift of Susan and Lewis Manilow, 2004.758

Barbara Kruger is known for photo- and text-based images in which she deconstructs representations of power generated by the commercial media, particularly as they affect women. Informed by her earlier profession as a graphic designer, her work typically combines iconography appropriated from 1940s and 1950s American film, television, and advertising with blunt slogans ripe with subtle insinuations. Kruger explained, “I’m interested in how identities are constructed, how stereotypes are formed, how narratives sort of congeal and become history.” By using the pronouns we and you and removing the identifying features of the figure, Kruger implicated the viewer, regardless of gender, in the objectification of this anonymous woman.