The Artist and Challenging the Patriarchy

The ideology of feminist art is comprehensively present in Barbara Kruger's Untitled (Your body is a battleground) created in 1989. Kruger designed Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground) in 1989 for the reproductive rights protest, to be used as a message for supporting a woman’s right to choose in the case of abortion.In this work, Kruger places a direct, concise caption across the surface of a photograph; confronting the viewer as it is held against a contrasting background. The emboldened and clear font, along with the emphatic colours of red, white and black used, bring attention to the phrase, conveying the privileging of the message to address the feminist struggle and encourage the questioning of widely held beliefs regarding women and female artists. The contrast of the normal and negative image in the work presents a symbol of conflict between the widespread public beliefs about women and the reality, showing the holistic nature of women despite the lack of equality between men and women. The simple nature of the image enhances its meaning with the use of the slogan as a fundamental base of creating dissension and denouncing stereotypes, effective in encouraging discourse to challenge assumptions regarding women. Kruger presents the audience with the challenges of feminism and effectively addresses the significant struggle of women within the patriarchy.  The image of the woman directly confronts the viewer, as she is the centre of the piece and it has been cropped so only her face can be seen, staring directly at the audience. The  line separating the face starkly suggests a definite distinction and simplified struggle between good and evil, representing the division within the reproductive health debate into two sides and emphasising the underlying dual nature of the issue.The words stating “your body is a battleground” represent how “the campaign for a woman’s right to choose occurs outside of her body, yet directly affects her” [Kim Adela 2016], evidently elucidating the metaphorical nature of the female body as a battlefield that women fight for and in. The history of the photograph used in the work presents the audience with political issues regarding gender and the exploitation of women. The woman in the centre is an idealised portrayal of perfection, understood to be an appropriated image, alluding to the societal commodification and fabrication of the female form. The almost reflective nature of the symmetrical face conveys to the viewer that this image is a construct of societal expectations for women to appear as perfect and beautiful objects. Kruger represents this woman as no longer an individual, instead the unattainable product of societal ideals while the addition of text critiques the original image and the reasons for its production. Kruger’s decontextualisation of the image reminds the viewer that women face these kinds of struggles and challenges daily and the political message in the work are extrapolated and made significant through the use of the frank slogan. Kruger’s artworks is an “aggressive, powerful work of art that compels the viewer to address the struggles that women face” [Kim Adela 2016].