Photo © Tate (Reece Straw)
10 rooms in Media Networks
This display shows the work of the anonymous feminist collective who use daring text and phrases to expose injustice in the art world and beyond
The Guerrilla Girls are an activist group made up of women artists and art professionals. They formed in 1985, in response to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York which featured only 13 women out of 169 artists. Under the cover of darkness, they fly-posted SoHo street corners, declaring statistics that exposed the gender-based discrimination in museums and art galleries. They hide their identities behind gorilla masks and have adopted pseudonyms of celebrated dead women artists and writers such as Kathë Kollwitz, Frida Kahlo and Gertrude Stein.
Today, the group continue to reveal the racism, sexism and homophobia prevalent in art and society. They are most well-known for text-based posters that drip with wit and sarcasm, holding Euro American institutions accountable for their actions. This dry sense of humour on backgrounds of pop pinks and yellows contrasts with the harrowing story of inequality being told. By using straightforward data and rhetorical questions, the facts speak for themselves.
The art in this room shows the different ways in which Guerrilla Girls play and provoke the museum industry. As well as fly posters, the group have produced stickers, comics and even children’s activity books as part of their agenda to be the ‘conscience of the art world’.