Barbara Kruger (American) – Stereotypes of women in advertising

“I work with pictures and words
because they have the ability to
determine who we are and who we

aren’t” - Barbara Kruger


 First her signs address you with the use of pronouns, then they entertain you with clever text, later they cause you to question why they are amusing, and finally her pieces indicate that the humorousness comes from something deeper in our society.
Kruger’s You Are Not Yourself (1982) uses this humorous technique to underscore a feminist point of view. The words ‘you are not yourself’ are disjointedly laid over a photograph of a distressed woman looking into a shattered mirror. This montage is immediately ironic because you are looking into a mirror, the object our culture relies on to reflect reality, but it is cracked and without its reassurance you are not yourself. Somehow without the recognition of the mirror, the axis of our culture, your own existence is in question. This begs the question why are you not yourself? Continuing with the theme of feminist art, Kruger is perhaps indicating that you are not yourself because our culture, ruled by the mirror and the media, mandates that you be one thing that you are not or possibly may never be. Kruger is commenting on the unreality of the ideal female image portrayed by the media

Text from: http://dvisible.com/2007/04/05/you-are-not-yourself-a-glimpse-into-the-work-of-barbara-kruger/