Barbara Kruger to launch Major New Installation on a Ukrainian Intercity Train

Barbara Kruger says: "Thinking about the power of the everyday, of beginnings and ends, of joy and loss." 

Whilst Ukrainian airspace remains closed, it is Ukrainian trains that carry civilians to safety, bring families together, transport soldiers to and away from the frontlines, and deliver humanitarian aid. In this way, the Intercity train is not only a means of transit but a crucial lifeline.  

In her decision to inscribe poetry onto its surfaces, Kruger draws a direct lineage to early avant-garde strategies of public messaging, particularly to Vasyl Yermylov and his agit-trains of the 1920s which bore revolutionary slogans and imagery as they traversed the war-torn landscape. In both cases the train becomes a vessel for physical and conceptual movement, carrying messages that seek to transform as they travel. As the train speeds forward, Kruger’s words will pulse on its surface; their meaning accumulating and shifting with every passing station.  

Translated into Ukrainian on the train’s surface, Kruger’s newly commissioned text - Untitled (Another Again) - is a poem of relentless rhythm and stark oppositions, echoing the mechanical constancy of the railway itself:

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER NIGHT ANOTHER DARKNESS ANOTHER LIGHT ANOTHER KISSANOTHER FIGHT ANOTHER LOSS ANOTHER WIN ANOTHER WISH ANOTHER SIN ANOTHER SMILE ANOTHER TEAR ANOTHER HOPE ANOTHER FEAR ANOTHER LOVE ANOTHER YEARANOTHER STRIFE ANOTHER LIFE 

Barbara Kruger’s work has long been an uncompromising reflection of the intersection between language and power. Emerging from a background in design and conceptual art, she has shaped a distinct visual language, one that fuses the urgency of mass communication with a radical critique of politics, consumerism and ideology. For decades her stark declarative texts - often in white Futura Bold against red or black backgrounds - have inhabited the spaces of advertising media and public infrastructure, subverting the systems they mimic. In this latest work, Kruger extends this engagement with public space to a moving, momentary dimension transforming an Intercity train into a site of poetic and political resonance. 

Running from the 1^st of May to 14^th July and curated by Maria Isserlis, Barbara Kruger’s intervention on a Ukrainian Intercity train is an act of solidarity, and a recognition of both the suffering and defiant perseverance of those who board these carriages daily. The Ukrainian railway system - long a subject of poetic and revolutionary imagination - now functions as both a site of survival and cultural resistance.  

Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, CEO of Ukrainian Railways, said: “Ukrainian Railways is excited to work with one of the world's most renowned artists to bring the message of solidarity to Ukrainians as well as the message of our country's resilience to the world. Throughout the full-scale war we have become far more than just public transport and constantly seek new creative ways to make an impact.” 

Main Image: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Blind idealism is...), 2016, Wall painting, High Line, NY, A High Line Commission, On view March 2016 – March 2017. Courtesy of the artist, Friends of the High Line, and Sprüth Magers. Photo: Timothy Schenck