"I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't," says the American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger, who made a name for herself internationally in the 1980s. Frequently conceived for public space, her works are comments on the individual and society, on war and culture, but also on advertising and commercialism. After studying, Kruger first worked as an editorial graphic designer and later as a picture editor for Condé Nast Publications. This was where she developed her individual idiom as an artist in the combination of images and texts.

The use of large, ostentatious lettering turns characters into images, makes language and meaning perceivable in a spatial manner. Kruger once called those places that are covered with writing all over "walk-in spaces of thinking." In her installation "Circus" developed for the Rotunda of the Schirn in 2010, black and white words and sentences cover all its walls, its floor, and its ceiling, creating an overwhelming impression for the viewer.