Guerilla Girls is an artist-activist group founded in 1985 in New York dedicated to fighting sexism and racism in the art world. The group was made up of anonymous women artists wearing gorilla masks and using pseudo names of deceased women artists namely Kate Hollwitz, Alma Thomas, Rosalba Carriera, Frida Kahlo, Julia de Burgos and Hanna Höch.
The group began in response to the exhibition International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture in MoMA. The exhibition claimed to display the era’s top artists from 17 countries but the roster only included 13 women and even fewer people of color and none of them were women. To add salt to the injury Kynaston McShine the show’s curator commented in interviews that “Any artist that wasn’t in the show should rethink ‘his’ career.”
It was started as a protest against the exhibition with little success but they later started to look for other methods for protesting through the use of street art, posters, prints, and actions.The girls naturally gained popularity and gradually became an embraced part of the art world.
The group has a clear feminist agenda and later expanded their focus to include racism as well becoming the self-proclaimed consciousness of the art-world by heavily criticizing its sexism and racism. They started to do projects outside of New York as well enabling them to address sexism and racism internationally too.
Through their work, the girls have witnessed many positive changes and brought attention to the sexism and racism in the art-world on an international scale and influenced a more inclusive approach from the part of curators and art-dealers.
REFERENCES
The Museum of Modern Art. (2017). An International Survey of Recent Painting and
Sculpture | MoMA. [online] Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2220
[Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].
Tate. (2017). Who are Guerrilla Girls? | Tate. [online] Available at:
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/guerrilla-girls- 6858/who-are- guerrilla-girls [Accessed 7
Dec. 2017].
Sparkmovement.org. (2017). SPARK Artists: The Guerrilla Girls and activism as art | Spark
Movement. [online] Available at: http://www.sparkmovement.org/2014/09/09/spark-artists-
the-guerrilla- girls-and- activism-as- art/ [Accessed 7 Dec. 2017].