This three part series was inspired by the art of Barbara Kruger, whose work explores the relationship between feminism, consumerism, desire, and identity in the style of print advertising. 

In this series, I repurposed her artworks to further comment on gender identity, academic discourse from second wave feminism, and the 1960s "it" girl. 

Original artworks: 

1. Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground) (1989)

2. “You are not yourself” (1981)

3. Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face) (1981)

This piece see the original subject replaced with a photo of Judith Butler, a prominent gender theorist. Kruger’s 'Untitled (your body is a battleground)' was inspired by abortion rights and implicates concepts of female identity and societal hierarchies. Butler’s gender performativity involves similar ideas about societal hierarchies and socialization, as well as gender roles and identity (Butler). Being so similar in concept, I merged the two pieces.

The second piece uses the broken and fragmented mirrors torepresent the various roles and expectations for women in society. I switched out Kruger’s subject for a picture of Jean Shrimpton. Jean Shrimpton was the embodiment of the “it” girl of the 1960s. The image is meant to show the different fragmentations of identity in the mirror but instead with the ideal woman in behind the glass, who is societies “it” girl.

The previous marble statue subject in the original image was replaced with the

infamous 1960s twiggy photoshoot. Kruger’s original work critiqued the concept of the male gaze and implicated the viewer as voyeur. By combining the two, I am calling attention to the how the male gaze influenced consumer culture and female identity in the 1960s. Twiggy is representative of 60s swinging London’s “it” girl, and thus represented the commercialization in female identities during this time.