Have Me Feed Me Hug Me Love Me Need Me

Building on her early career as a graphic designer, Barbara Kruger turns the style of advertising on its head to criticize consumer culture and the stereotyping of women. Each of these lenticular photographs shifts as it is viewed, alternating between the first-person demands of the title and pictures of newborn babies labeled with the names of psychological disorders. With these textual juxtapositions, Kruger calls out the societal pressures on women to bear children. The switching images, meanwhile, allude to the advertising practice of embedding subliminal messages that shape perceptions and desires. “[My] interest is in dealing with the way pictures and words have the power to tell us who we can and cannot be—how they construct us as social beings,” Kruger has said.