Women you should know about: The Guerrilla Girls

Who are the Guerrilla Girls?

That’s the thing, no one knows. To keep their personal careers safe and to not distract from the message the Guerilla Girls are completely anonymous. They use code names of historical female artists to hide their identity, even from other members. Who the Guerrilla Girls are as a group is far easier to explain.

The Guerrilla Girls formed New York City in 1985 in response to the MoMa’s “An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” in which only 13 out of 165 artists were women. The “Guerilla” of Guerilla Girls is because of their guerilla warfare style of targeting specific people or institutions.

What is their mission?

The Guerrilla Girls started as feminist activists within the art world fighting for more women and POC representation. But they have spoken out on many topics like racism, sexism, LGBTQ+ rights, tokenism, pop culture, film, war, and politics. They use humor and shocking imagery to bring important issues to light, I think their art really speaks for itself. The Guerrilla Girls target language and action, or more commonly in action, in regards to how women in art are treated “They don’t call Rembrandt or Van Gogh ‘male artists.’”

What have they been up to recently?

In 2021 the Guerrilla Girls created 13 exhibitions and 21 workshops at colleges around the world from Texas to France and Australia to Spain. They curated 20 exhibitions and 5 workshops in 2020 that were mostly digital tours or speeches given via Zoom. The Guerrilla Girls also released a new book “Guerrilla Girls: The Art of Behaving Badly” which the New York Times awarded as one of the best art books of 2020. The Guerrilla Girls are also constantly making more activist-based art, sometimes even making callbacks to their previous posters.