Barbara Kruger: Untitled (Pride and Contempt)

Περιγραφή στα Αγγλικά

Words run ninety metres along the face of the National Library of Greece. That mural is the largest piece in Untitled (Pride and Contempt), Barbara Kruger's first solo exhibition in Greece — thirteen newly made, site-specific works installed outdoors at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), along the Canal and across the Esplanade.

Kruger built her language over five decades: blunt declarative text laid over image, usually white type on red, set in heavy Futura. Here the words appear in Greek for the first time. The statements turn on truth, power, and individual agency, and read as direct commentary on a polarised Europe — the rise of hard ideologies, the unease of economic, migratory, and geopolitical pressure. Curated by Katerina Stathopoulou, the show puts that argument not in a gallery but in the path of everyone crossing the grounds.

Because the works sit in open public space, you don't queue or buy a ticket — you walk into them, day or evening, the way you'd pass any sign, except these ones argue back. The scale rewards an unhurried loop of the Canal over a single glance from the tram stop.

If you want quiet framed pictures and wall labels, this is the opposite premise. But if you want public art that treats the reader as a citizen to provoke, Kruger has been doing exactly that longer than most.

Admission is open, and the installation runs through 1 November 2026 — six months of argument written, for once, in Greek.