'Another day. Another night': Barbara Kruger's manifesto arrives in Bilbao

From tomorrow, June 24, to November 9, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao will host the exhibition Another Day. Another Night , a retrospective of five decades of work by American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger . "This is the first anthological exhibition of the artist in our country," says Pablo Sampedro, representing Occident , the exhibition's sponsor.

Kruger , whose work is recognized worldwide for its black and white images featuring bold messages on a deep red background , directed the installation of this exhibition, also taking into account the significant linguistic context of the Basque Country and including words in this language in the work on display at the museum.

This collection explores how Kruger uses the power of words and images to question the structures that shape our lives : identity, desire, truth, and control. It brings together works that delve into a critique of power structures and their abuse, consumerism, and gender inequality , among many other themes. She revisits some of them, adapting them to the current situation, and creates others specifically for Bilbao.

Kruger , who for a time was a graphic designer at the Condé Nast media chain, knows firsthand the power of advertising and discourse to shape our lives . That's precisely why she chooses to subvert that intention to expose the mechanisms of control and persuasion.

In short, and in the words of Miren Arzalluz , director of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Kruger 's work aims to make those who view it "aware of the power structures that even come to define our own identity and desires."

The exhibition is composed of several rooms where text, image, and sound converge, all interlocking and merging with the museum's architecture. His most iconic work, Untitled (I shop therefore I am) (1990), opens the exhibition as a video: a puzzle that assembles itself and, when assembled, emits that characteristic sound of a monetary payment—the universal " chickling" —before it falls apart again.

This is surrounded by another work, That's the Way We Do It , where she compiles, in collage form, all the images she found online imitating her. "She reappropriates the appropriations of her work," explains its curator, Lekha Hileman Waitoller . Not far from this space, the clothing brand Obey appears, which used a perhaps all-too-obvious inspiration from Kruger for its logo.

The Guggenheim also displays works that reference identity, colonialism, truth, and the barrage of information we receive that shapes how we understand the world, which she represents with a projection that rapidly changes everything from videos of kittens to images of Donald Trump.

The rooms are connected by a corridor, which houses the work Untitled (Camino) (2025), which introduces a color, green, which she recently began using in addition to red. In this work, we can see quotes from artists such as Kafka and James Baldwin, which are deeply meaningful to the artist.

In this transition, he introduces the Basque language , as in another of the most impressive rooms - there is no other word - where all the walls and the floor are covered with gigantic black and white quotes from The Bible , Virginia Woolf or George Orwell in 1984 that make us reflect on issues such as control by institutions.

This concept undoubtedly culminates in the last room of the exhibition, where we find three televisions with three recognizable texts: the fragment recited by American children in school while looking at the flag as a nationalist promise, the marriage vows, and a will of property on the last screen.

The entire work on display is accompanied by audio recordings that serve as a counterpoint to the harsh criticisms of Kruger 's statements, as the sounds are composed of sweet voices and kind messages. They have that element of surprise, almost reminiscent of OK Computer (Radiohead, 1997), which raised the hair on the back of your neck with alienated, dehumanized voices, almost dissociated from the work but always in step with it. And always questioning the capitalist system.

As part of the artistic creation scene, Kruger finds herself in a dilemma, like the one she likes to portray in her works ( Please Laugh. Please Cry ): she criticizes this capitalist exchange, but "at the same time, she has to pay for her food," argues her curator. In any case, it's not easy to market works that are often composed of vinyl records measuring tens of meters, Hileman points out.

Kruger displays a postmodern disaffection in works whose main virtue is their timelessness, encouraged by a society that inevitably continues to enhance the messages she sends. In bold red. Works 30 or 40 years old that maintain their relevance because they seem created ad hoc for the political and social context of 2025.

In the curator's words: "The comments are generic enough that it doesn't matter whether the works are exhibited in Shanghai, London, or Bilbao. They are relevant and meaningful to whoever reads them." In this case, starting tomorrow, anyone who wants to come to Bilbao to read them will be invited. The objective is a clear sequence: read, think, and reflect.