Barbara Kruger. Untitled (Your comfort is my silence), 1981.
My silence is your comfort
As long as the ethereal “you” doesn’t hear “my” micronarrative, your worldview remains intact. The use of the pronouns serve to decenter the viewer’s position. The viewer is shaken because the natural reaction to the piece is that the “you” does not refer the viewer in particular, but to some otherness that is not viewing the picture at the moment. The viewer reacts by stepping out of s/he/its normal frame of reference to evaluate the picture, thereby forming s/he/its own micronarrative of what the image is referring to.
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