Guerilla Girl Power: why the art world needs a conscience

All Images are from the Guerilla Girls website

Guerilla Girls Images


































































Elizabeth Hess

The Guerilla Girls is a feminist activist group that emerged from the New York art scene in 1985 at a time when feminism was out of style and the art world was about money and fame. The Guerilla Girls are set up like a collective group of artists where artists are allowed to join and leave the group as they please. The girls in the group remain anonymous and whenever they present themselves to the public they always wear a gorilla mask to hide their true identity. All of the members never reveal their real names; they always refer to each other through the names of other female artists. For example, one Guerilla Girl calls herself “Frida Khalo.”

The girls are known for their “guerilla” style attacks in the New York art scene. They are most famous for the public awareness posters that they put up all around SoHo, and Tribeca. The purpose of the posters was to inform the public and the art world about the misrepresentation/invisibility or women in the New York art scene and around the globe. The major event that brought these women together was an upcoming show at the MOMA. The exhibition was survey of the work of international artists. What infuriated the women was that in the exhibition, less than 10% of female artists were included and 100% of them were white, which caused the girls to speak out about these issues through their posters. The posters were “activist statements that conformed to a distinct aesthetic format. It was obvious at first glance that the Girls were artists, yet these texts were pure propaganda.” I guess much activist work (especially if it contains political content) can seem like propaganda, but the point is to get the message across and make people feel as if they need to act in order to change things. These posters were meant to make female artists angry about the statistics, and make them fight for a balance in the art world. Just like so many women who belonged to the feminist movements across America, the Guerilla Girls wanted people to know that the fight for equality wasn’t over yet.

One of the interesting facts about the Guerilla Girls was that they remain an anonymous band of female (and possibly male) artists. The Girls often claimed that the message was more important than the person behind the message. They didn’t want the public to get wrapped up in the identity of these women; further, they didn’t want to ruin their own artistic careers for fear of criticism because of an association with the group. They admit that the anonymity drove people crazy because people always want a tangible person that they can point a finger at, which was impossible with the Girls anonymous existence. They liked the idea that they would be at exhibition openings, hearing people comment about the latest poster on the street.

My disappointment lies in the fact that the women have to remain anonymous in order to get their point across. Why is it not possible for women to freely and openly speak their minds without being fearful of being personally attacked? Although we have come a long way, it seems to me that we still have a long way to go before women are completely liberated and equal.

Laura