Barbara Kruger (born 1945) is an American conceptual artist represented by Mary Boone Gallery, New York. Kruger has also had exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris; and Sprüth Magers Berlin London.

Much of Kruger's graphic work consists of black-and-white photographs with overlaid captions set in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique. The phrases included in her work are usually declarative, and make common use of such pronouns as "you", "I", "we", and "they". The juxtaposition of imagery and text containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is a recurring motif in Kruger's work. The text in her works of the 1980s includes such phrases as "Your comfort is my silence" (1981), "You invest in the divinity of the masterpiece" (1982), and "I shop therefore I am" (1987). She has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t."

In 1980 she had her first solo exhibition at P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York. In 1985 she joined the prominent contemporary art gallery of Mary Boone, and has had eight solo shows there since.
In 2005 Kruger was honored at the 51st Venice Biennale with the "Golden Lion" for Lifetime Achievement. Kruger is currently a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.
In 2007, Kruger was one of the many artists to be a part of South Korea's Incheon Women Artists' Biennale in Seoul. This marked South Korea's first women's biennial. In September 2009, Kruger’s “Between Being Born and Dying”, a major installation commissioned by the Lever House Art Collection, opened at the New York City architectural landmark Lever House.

Kruger's pictures and words have been displayed in both galleries and public spaces, as well as framed and unframed photographs, posters, postcards, t-shirts, electronic signboards, billboards and on a train station platform in Strasbourg, France. For the past decade Kruger has created installations of video, film, audio and projection. Enveloping the viewer with the seductions of direct address, her work is consistently about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another.

Books

• Barbara Kruger: 7 January to 28 January 1989 by Barbara Kruger, Mary Boone Gallery, 1989

• Barbara Kruger: 5 January to 26 January 1991, by Barbara Kruger, 1991

• Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances by Barbara Kruger, 1994

• Love for Sale, by Kate Linker, 1996

• Remaking History (Discussions in Contemporary Culture, No 4) by Barbara Kruger, 1998

• Thinking of You, 1999 (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles)

• Barbara Kruger, by Angela Vettese, 2002

• Money Talks by Barbara Kruger and Lisa Phillips, 2005

Film and Video

• "Pleasure, Pain, Desire, Disgust". 1997

• "Twelve". 2004