Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Eva Hesse, Käthe Kollwitz and Gertrude Stein have all infiltrated or raided an art gallery or festival around the world to promote women and minorities — or, at least, their alter egos, the Guerrilla Girls, have.
This is a group of anonymous women who assume the identities of dead female artists and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. They produce posters, stickers, books, printed projects and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and culture at large. One of their most famous “raids” has been at the Sundance Festival, but they have also taken on Hollywood, the Oscars and many famous galleries.
The Guerrilla Girls was formed in 1985 when the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition entitled An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture. It was supposed to be an up-to-the-minute summary of the most significant contemporary art in the world. But of 169 artists, only 13 were female and all were white, either from Europe or the United States.
“That was bad enough,” says Guerrilla Girl and one of the founders of the group, Käthe Kollwitz*, “but the curator said any artist who wasn’t in the show should rethink ‘his’ career.That really annoyed a lot of artists because obviously the guy was completely prejudiced. Women demonstrated in front of the museum.”
The women started investigating and found that the most influential galleries and museums mostly exhibited works by male artists — almost no female artists were represented. When they showed the figures around, some said it was an issue of quality, not prejudice. The group decided to embarrass each institution by showing their records in public. “Those were the first posters we put up in the streets of Soho in New York,” says Kollwitz.
She says the Guerrilla Girls wear masks to put the focus on the issues rather than on the individuals and the pseudonyms are a necessity to protect their own careers from vengeful curators. “The mystery surrounding our identities has attracted attention,” says Kollwitz. “We could be anyone. We are everywhere.”
The group’s work has been passed around the world by kindred spirits and has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Bitch and Bust, several television programmes and countless art and feminist texts.
The Guerrilla Girls describe themselves as “feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman”.
Apart from the subjects they deal with, they see themselves as “inhabitants of many worlds” and believe they can use their posters, for example, in a large arena to deal with issues such as abortion rights, the homeless and rape, which have nothing to do with art.
Their book Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers is an illustrated guide to breaking down stereotypes and contradicts the idea that feminists don’t have a sense of humour. The group says it has discovered that ridicule and humiliation, backed up with irrefutable information, can disarm the powers that be, put them on the spot and force them to examine themselves.
“We have always been interested in affecting change by transforming the opinions of viewers, and we are always trying to find more effective ways to break through people’s preconceived notions and prejudices,” says Kollwitz. “We don’t do posters and actions that simply point to something and say, ‘This is bad’, as does a lot of political art.”
Instead, the group presents provocative images and statements, backed up with information, that give the audience a chance to think about an issue and come to a conclusion.
“We believe that some discrimination is conscious and some is unconscious and that we can embarrass some of the perpetrators into changing their ways,” she says. “This has proved true in the art world: things are better now than they ever were for women and artists of colour and we have helped effect that change.” Yet, at the same time, Kollwitz says, the group is still critical of the art world for its lack of ethics and its tokenism.
They have found inspiration in honouring women from the past. The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art contains stories about women who managed to find ways around the rules that tried to stop them from being artists.
Being a Guerrilla Girl does not come without its challenges. Kollwitz says many members have left the group for various reasons and she too has felt like abandoning the cause. “I have stayed since the beginning because there’s so much more to do to try to change people’s minds about the issues and because helping to create the GG work — more than 100 actions, posters, billboards and books — has been fascinating and challenging,” she says.
Fans in South Africa have been holding their breath for the group to visit here. “We’d love to come,” says Kollwitz. “Just arrange it.”
* This is not the artist’s real name, it is her assumed identity