Barbara Krugger

For about a year I had Barbara Krugger's 'Your Body is a Battleground' stuck on my wall at home, and looking back at my collages and little zines now that I'm researching her, I think her work has influenced mine a lot more than I'd really considered before. Her work says a lot while being very simple - that seems to be a reoccurring theme in well-known contemporary art. It's a hard thing to do, but so much more effective than complementing the message and overworking things.

I think her instillation pieces are very effective too.

This is my very favorite work of hers:

Apparently the quote 'it's time for women to stop being politely angry' is by the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Lehymah Bbowee, who's work helped to end the Liberian civil war. The women in the image are Mergaret Sanger, the person who created what we now call 'planned parenthood'. She was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The eyes in the image belong to Lauryn Hochberg, who does all theses brilliant things: Voice work, puppeteer, improv artist, educator, actor, acting instructor.

I didn't realize how much thought was put into the characters in her images! That just makes them ever better. What an awesome artist.