From February 1st to March 17th, Serpentine South–in collaboration with Outernet Arts–presents works of American artist Barbara Kruger. Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. marks the artist’s first solo institutional show in London in over 20 years. Devoted to the exploration of visual culture and image production, Kruger is known for her work with imagery and words, frequently borrowing from the language of advertising, graphic design, and magazines. Mechanisms of power, gender, class, and capital are often explored in her practice, both in the past and in her recent work.

Ilaria Sponda: How is Barbara Kruger’s exhibition engaging with Serpentine Galleries’ overall program? How does it feel to bring her art to the Serpentine again since the 90s?

Bettina Korek: This will be the first solo institutional show of Barbara’s work in London in more than 20 years! Kruger previously exhibited at Serpentine in 1994 as part of the group exhibition Wall to Wall, and it’s great to work with her again—after three decades her practice and its legacy are more impactful than ever. The upcoming presentation aligns with a mandate of Serpentine’s program to spotlight groundbreaking international innovators whose work deserves greater attention in the UK.

IS: The exhibition will be expanded in the “public realm”. How so?

BK: Titled Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You., the exhibition features a selection of installations, moving image works, and soundscapes installed across the Serpentine South gallery, bookshop, electric taxis, and outside banners, as well as on large-scale, immersive wraparound screens at Outernet Arts’ The Now Building in Soho. We began a collaboration with Outernet Arts in the summer of 2023 to present a site-specific work by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan to coincide with their Serpentine exhibition titled Third World: The Bottom Dimension. Serpentine’s abiding ethos is to ensure that art and ideas are free and open to all, so what better place than the busy hubbub of central London to amplify what the artists we work with are doing at the galleries in Kensington Gardens.

IS: How does the dislocation of Kruger’s work create an additional layer of understanding of her art? How does a white gallery such as Serpentine South intervene in the production of meaning of her artistic oeuvre in the now?

BK: Our show is a site-specific iteration of Barbara’s works recently presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2022), the Art Institute of Chicago (2021–2022), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2022–2023). Each time, the works on view have been adapted to respond to the unique conditions and context of the city and spaces where they are shown. Barbara’s work responds to the architecture of Serpentine reflecting on histories and contextual frameworks. For instance, the show welcomes audiences with an audio chorus of greetings, emotions, and sentiments that address visitors throughout the building.

IS: How does the becoming public of art–thus its transposition into public art–differ in the USA and EU according to your experience?

BK: The art world of the 21st Century in many ways is synonymous with globalization. I think today, a kind of subtle calibration is taking place. Rather than global, maybe we will look back on the 2020s as more local—worldwide, yes, but with greater attention placed on what is specifically happening within smaller radiuses. The London art ecosystem is very unique and public art is very strong in the UK. At Serpentine, it has emerged as a central strand of the program and we’re proud to have presented some of the most iconic works across our history including Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s London Mastaba in the Serpentine Lake (2018), and more recently I LOVE YOU EARTH by Yoko Ono (2021), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster In remembrance of the coming alien (Alienor), (2022), and Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker (2022 – ongoing).

IS: What’s your experience of Kruger’s art in particular and how can it dialogue differently or similarly in the two continents?

BK: This show will extend beyond gallery walls to engage Kensington Gardens and other sites around London, building on a history of public art collaborations I am proud to have facilitated with Kruger in Los Angeles—from wrapping school buses with her signature larger-than-life graphic texts in 2012 to staging massive billboards and murals in 2020 for the second edition of Frieze Los Angeles.

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, NJ, USA) is an artist who works with pictures and words. She lives and works between Los Angeles and New York. After spending two years at  Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design in New York, she began working as a designer and picture editor at the Condé Nast magazines Mademoiselle and House & Garden. Her works have been shown in international art institutions and across public spaces, including installed and projected onto buildings, billboards, hoardings, cars, skate parks, and printed newspapers. She’s an Emeritus Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art at UCLA.