About this artwork
Barbara Kruger’s photo- and text-based images disrupt representations of power generated by commercial media, particularly those that affect women. Informed by her earlier profession as a graphic designer, her work typically combines images and iconography appropriated from 1940s and 1950s American film, television, and advertising with blunt slogans rife with insinuation. Kruger explained, “I’m interested in how identities are constructed, how stereotypes are formed, how narratives sort of congeal and become history.” Here the artist removed the identifying features of the figure and used the pronouns we and you to implicate the viewer, regardless of gender, in the objectification of this anonymous woman.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Contemporary Art
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Artist
- Barbara Kruger
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Title
- We Will Not Become What We Mean to You
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1983
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Medium
- Gelatin silver print
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Dimensions
- 184 × 121 × 5 cm (72 1/2 × 48 × 2 in.)
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Credit Line
- Gift of Susan and Lewis Manilow
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Reference Number
- 2004.758
Extended information about this artwork
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.
