Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist known for her black and white images with strong messages surrounded by a red border. Her work often addresses issues of power, identity, and sexuality using pronouns like "you" and "we" to engage viewers. This document discusses two of Kruger's pieces that relate to mental health and eating disorders through imagery of a cracked mirror, broken text, diet pills, scales, and magazines promoting unrealistic body standards. It also mentions the student's attempt to create their own work in Kruger's style focusing on these topics of mental health and identity.

1. Barbara Kruger – Mental Health

2. About the Artist
• Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Her
work consists of black and white images, behind a
strong message surrounded in a red border. The
messages she uses, use pronouns such as ‘you’,
‘your’, ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘they’ to address everyone, and make
sure everyone listens to the message that she has to
say. Kruger addresses issues such as power, identity
and sexuality.

3. Analysis 1
This piece from Kruger relates to my
topic of mental health as when
someone is suffering with a mental
disorder, they aren’t themselves. The
cracked mirror image represents the
broken way that someone, who suffers
with a mental disorder, would feel or
see themselves.
The broken up text also shows that a
sufferer of a mental disorder would
feel in pieces, and not whole due to
the problems that they face.

4. Analysis 2
This piece relates to eating disorders .
Kruger shows this with diet pills,
scales, a cosmopolitan magazine and
the texts that she uses. People who
suffer with eating disorders are
sometimes influenced by the media.
The magazine is significant because of
this, as they contain dieting tips, and
images of distorted or ‘perfected’
women in which someone might see
and want to look like that.

5. My Work in the Style of Barbara
Kruger