Did This K-Pop Girl Group Rip Off a Classic Barbara Kruger Installation for Its New Video? It Certainly Looks Like It

The video for the chart-topping K-Pop band Mamamoo’s fiery
new single “HIP” may look familiar to some audiences. It
appears to have borrowed heavily from artist Barbara Kruger’s
1994/1995 installation Untitled, a controlled mess of
ad imagery and slogans in white font on a red background that climb
the walls, floors, and ceiling. In Mamamoo’s video, Kruger’s
black-and-white ad photos appear to have been swapped for images of
the four female performers, Hwasa, Wheein, Solar, and Moonbyul,
with “XXX” pasted over their mouths and eyes. On the wall are
texts, which appear in Kruger’s signature white, red, and black
Futura Bold font, that spell out phrases like “Follow the Leader”
and “Trendsetter.”

“HIP,” which came out in mid-November, has 29 million views on
YouTube so far, making its use of Kruger’s art—which has long
criticized the use of women’s bodies in
consumerism—particularly rich. In “HIP,” we watch a group of
20-somethings gyrating while whisper-singing lyrics like “all
I wanna be is cool”—a phrase that one could easily imagine in a
work by Kruger.

“This is another illustration of the power and influence of
Barbara Kruger’s work, which transcends the boundaries of visual
art,” Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, Kruger’s longtime art
dealers, told Artnet News. “Now, some 35 years after we first
started working with her, we see Kruger’s visual
language replicated on a multi-generational and global
scale,” the dealers add. Kruger did not respond to a request for
comment, nor did representatives for Mamamoo.

This isn’t the first time Kruger’s work appears to have been
appropriated in zeitgeisty branding. The streetwear label Supreme
has notoriously made use of her white-on-red text for much of its
ads and clothing labels. In a very apparent jab at Supreme in 2017,
Kruger launched a pop-up store for Performa that sold skate decks
and shirts.

By that point she’d already publicly called out Supreme for
using her insignia when the label tried to take someone else to
court for copyright in 2013. “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of
totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly
foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright
infringement,” she told Complex during the
controversy.

Given the tragic drama engulfing the K-Pop world at the moment,
the use of Kruger’s imagery also strikes a particularly ominous
note in this context. This fall, singers Sulli, 25, and Goo Hara,
28, were found dead in separate incidences, both suspected to
have committed suicide following cyberbullying from fans. The
members of Mamamoo have said “HIP” is about ignoring the criticism
of others. The group has, along with a few other K-Pop, canceled
recent performances out of respect for the deaths of their fellow
artists.

Yonden Lhatoo, chief news editor of South China Morning
Post, called the proliferation of K-Pop an “infectious
disease” after another singer died in 2017. “Would-be K-pop stars,
while still underage, are regularly locked into unbelievably unfair
contracts and incarcerated in grueling boot camps for training, a
good decade before they get to even record a song, let alone become
famous,” wrote Yonden in an opinion column. “The ones who are lucky
enough to make it end up paying off debts and earning a pittance
for years.”

The post Did This K-Pop Girl Group Rip Off a Classic Barbara
Kruger Installation for Its New Video? It Certainly Looks Like
It appeared first on artnet News.