Artist Barbara Kruger's site-specific installation at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, "Belief+Doubt" (2012), fills the lower-level lobby. Walls, floor and escalator sides covered in text-printed vinyl address the social relations and power networks that define daily life.
When the value of certitude is taken for granted, Kruger says she is interested in introducing doubt. Swaths of the floor are covered in open-ended questions ("Who is free to choose? Who speaks? Who is silent?"), while other areas explore desire and consumption ("You want it. You buy it. You forget it.").
Assistant Curator Melissa Ho says, "Kruger's command of architectural space and her ability to engage an audience amidst busy, lived experience make her the ideal artist to work with this site. 'Belief+Doubt' takes advantage of the constant movement through the lobby. As visitors descend the escalators, they are surrounded by language that beckons from all sides but only fully reveals itself as they pace and circulate through the entire space."
In the '80s, Kruger's signature photomontages, composed of old magazine and book images and text banners, helped bring photographic illustration and the techniques of mass media into the mainstream of contemporary art--an influence on the development of visual art, graphic design and street art. Since the '90s, Kruger has focused on creating environments that surround the viewer in language, as at the Hirshhorn, with the enclosure of a space with text. On view through 2014.
Hirshhorn Museum, Independence Avenue and Seventh Street S.W., Washington, DC
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