Barbara Kruger’s immersive atrium installation continues at MoMA through January 2 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
BARBARA KRUGER: THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.
The Museum of Modern Art
Donald and Catherine Marron Family Atrium
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through January 2, $14-$25
www.moma.org
online slideshow
There’s one word that sticks out in Barbara Kruger’s text-based architectural installation Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. in MoMA’s atrium, and it’s in the title twice: No, not Mean but You. Standing in the middle of the imposing space, you are surrounded by words, phrases, and sentences in black-and-white, arranged in horizontal grids and ovals on the floor, walls, and stanchions, that deal with personal and group identity, racial and class injustice, greed, war, consumer culture, and capitalism. These are themes the seventy-seven-year-old Newark native has been exploring throughout her five-decade career, in such pervious works as I Shop Therefore I Am, You Are Not Yourself, The Globe Shrinks, Untitled (Questions), and Whose Hopes? Whose Fears?
A block on the floor pronounces: “IF YOU WANT A / PICTURE OF THE / FUTURE, IMAGINE / A BOOT STAMPING / ON A HUMAN FACE, / FOREVER. / GEORGE ORWELL.”
On the upper south wall, Kruger explains: “THIS IS ABOUT THE YOU NOT I. / THIS IS ABOUT A WORLD OF HURT. / THIS IS ABOUT LOOKING FOR / THE MOMENT WHEN PRIDE / BECOMES CONTEMPT. ABOUT / WANTING ONE ANOTHER. / ABOUT FEARING ONE ANOTHER. / ABOUT TOUCHING ONE ANOTHER. / ABOUT THE WAR FOR ME TO BECOME YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.”
Among the other statements that emerge in this dizzying display are “MONEY TALKS,” “THIS IS ABOUT LOVING AND LONGING. ABOUT SHAMING AND HATING. . . . ABOUT WHO GETS WHAT AND WHO OWNS WHAT,” “YOU ARE HERE, LOOKING THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, DARKLY. / SEEING THE UNSEEN, THE INVISIBLE, THE BARELY THERE,” and “IN THE END, YOU DISAPPEAR / IN THE END, LIES PREVAIL / IN THE END, ANGER FADES / IN THE END, HOPE IS LOST.” In addition, a few playful emojis contribute their thoughts on it all.
“Barbara Kruger said architecture is one of the predominant orderings of social space,” curatorial assistant Margarita Lizcano Hernandez says in a MoMA ArtSpeaks video, continuing, “There’s this level of activation of the space that, just by entering it, you’ve become part of it.”
But even as the words, in Kruger’s trademark bold, sans serif font, predict loneliness and doom, hope is not lost; there is an innate joy in just seeing these words, in sharing them with the strangers around you undergoing the same experience. There’s a reason why “YOU” and “ME” are crossed out in the title, followed by a “YOU” that is not crossed out: It’s really about us; Kruger is pointing a finger at everyone.