Barbara Kruger
06.24.2025 - 11.09.2025
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents the first comprehensive survey in Spain of American artist Barbara Kruger, whose bold, thought-provoking work has captivated audiences for over five decades. This expansive exhibition explores how Kruger harnesses the power of words and images to question the structures that shape our daily lives—identity, desire, truth, and control.
From the very beginning of her career, Kruger has challenged how language functions in the media, in politics, and in our own inner dialogues. Using concise, declarative phrases set in stark black and white text punctuated by either red or green, she draws from the visual language of advertising—but instead of selling products, her works demand critical thinking. Phrases like “Your body is a battleground” or “I shop therefore I am” have become cultural touchstones, raising urgent questions about gender, consumption, and power.
This exhibition brings together works from across her career—early paste-ups, large-scale vinyl texts, video installations, audio interventions, and site-specific pieces created especially for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. As one moves through the galleries, Kruger’s art unfolds across floors, walls, and screens, immersing visitors in a charged visual and sonic environment. Her work is not just something to look at—it is something to experience, to question, and to confront.
In dialogue with Bilbao’s own linguistic and cultural histories, Kruger has created work in Spanish and Basque that explores how language defines who we are and how we live together. As she puts it, “Language is a powerful force—and it defines us.”
At a time when information is constant and truth feels increasingly unstable, Kruger’s work encourages us to slow down, read closely, and think deeply. With wit, urgency, and visual precision, she reminds us that images speak—and so must we.
Galleries: 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209
Curator: Lekha Hileman Waitoller
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (FOREVER), 2017
Print on vinyl wallpaper
Dimensions variable
Installation view, FOREVER, Sprüth Magers, Berlin, September 16, 2017–January 20, 2018
Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers
Photo: Timo Ohler