“Making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of movements into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever.” Barbara Kruger.
Artists interact with the events and issues of their time and place. Artists can generally be influenced by the world they live in and are surrounded by. Different artists have different approaches to different issues. Some look at things very seriously and objectify their work with passion, some look at things with a satirical take and jokingly poke fun, and then some people just don’t care and produce art because they just love doing it.
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. She was born on January 26, 1945 in Newark, New Jersey. A large part of her work consists of photographs overlayed with assertive captions. She uses the techniques of mass communication and advertising to explore gender and identity. Much of her ideas and texts are related to ideas like feminism, consumerism, individual anatomy and desire. She appropriates images from mainstream magazines, and reimagines them with her bold text overlaying, giving them new meaning. Her ideas are developed on computers, and then later transformed into sometimes a billboard sized print.
Her artwork “Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground)” was created to be used as a poster for the Women’s March on Washington, which supported a women’s right to choose. The artwork is a print, edited on a computer. The artwork is a photo of a woman who is obviously a model from a magazine. Half of her face is a black and white print, with the other half being a negative print. The words of “Your Body Is a Battleground” are divided into 3 parts from top to bottom, overlaying the image. The artwork represents the right to choose abortion, the campaign for a woman’s right to choose occurs outside of her body, yet directly