Guerrilla Girls Overview

The New York-based Guerrilla Girls (self-styled "conscience of the art world") use humor, renegade tactics, and the element of surprise to spread their indictment of sexism and racism in both the art world and the culture at large. Oh yes, and... [more]

The New York-based Guerrilla Girls (self-styled "conscience of the art world") use humor, renegade tactics, and the element of surprise to spread their indictment of sexism and racism in both the art world and the culture at large. Oh yes, and they wear scary gorilla masks. Founded in 1985, they have since graduated from their initial, surreptitious nighttime poster-plastering to lecturing around the world, all the while maintaining their anonymity behind a cloak of fake brown fur. Thumbing through a chronicle of their exploits is like reading a comic book with an urban-underground-artist superhero. "We're anonymous do-gooders, like Robin Hood, Batman, Zorro, and the Lone Ranger," explained one member. Cultural terrorists, they usually strike in the dead of night, running around in their gorilla masks with stacks of posters and buckets of glue, pasting up their declarations of defiance on museum and gallery exteriors. One of their more famous missives lists the "advantages" of being a woman artist, including "working without the pressure of success." In 1997, they distributed stickers displaying statistics on the dearth of Oscar-nominated women directors to attendees of the Academy Awards. Why the masks? To focus attention on the message rather than the personalities delivering it. Humor is their trademark, softening the sting of the harsh reality they highlight. [show less]