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Barbara Kruger with YI participants. |
Youth Insights kicked off the 2000-2001 year with an Artists
and Youth: A Dialogue with Barbara Kruger. Held on October 12,
2000, it was an exciting, live event that attracted over a hundred
audience members. Many came to partake in a rare opportunity to
meet an accomplished artist. Kruger's work was on display that season
at the Whitney Museum, but this was not her first appearance at
the museum. Her work was seen in three previous Biennials ('73.
'85 & '87).
Kruger was very interactive with the audience and gave a glimpse
into the depth of her work and expressed many of her opinions about
today's society. Barbara Kruger's signature style is the use of
billboard-sized work with text and images in three primary colors:
red, white and black. Her works often deals with social taboos and
stereotypes, using emphatic and clever phrases such as, "I Shop
Therefore I am," or "Your Body is a Battleground," to
name a few.
Barbara Kruger said, "There are so many ways to make art because
to me one of those things that it means to make art is the ability
to visualize or write about or make music about your experience
of the world. To take what it feels to live the moments of your
life and to somehow communicate that through different mediums to
another person or other people."
Here are some pieces of the Dialogue with Barbara Kruger along
with some phrases from the artist:
BK: You know, the only advice I can give, which I think has been
fruitful for me, and I talk about with my friends who are artists,
is basically, I would say, to be very vigilant with yourself in
terms of what you're doing. To make sure that it's the best that
you can do, to try to remember that the only person you're competing
with is yourself and to try to be as fluent in what you do as possible.
SHAHRINA: "So what do you think about the future? Do you think
that stereotyping is going to increase or decrease or stay the same?"
BK: "I think stereotypes are with us every moment and I think that
we have to fight it when we see it in others and fight it in ourselves.
Absolutely. And it's a self-assignment we all have to give each
other, because that piece downstairs when you first walk out the
elevator where you see all those words, those are not pretty words,
but they are words that are used to label people, to limit people,
to hate people and to kill people. You turn on the T.V. and you
see stuff that's going down in the world right this minute in at
least seven different places on the globe if not right here in this
city based on that fear and hatred."
BK: "There are things that I see that I think are really just rank,
that are really bummers, you know, that I really don't agree with,
but I am not going to make it disappear. I don't want it to disappear.
I think one of the geniuses of this culture is its ability to just
allow for difference and God knows we have a lot more difference
we're gonna have to allow for because it's really a constant struggle
to allow for ideas and thoughts and people who don't look just like
you and me or sound just like you and me. That's the constant struggle
of this culture."
© 2001 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
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