Guerrilla Girls

1985, live in the United States

In 1985, in dialogue with the feminist and civil rights movements in the US, a group of women artists and activists started promoting actions designed to expose the art world’s sexism and racism. The women adopted gorilla masks and pseudonyms like Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz as a strategy to denounce the erasure of women from history and contemporary art. Using basic statistics as a weapon, the Guerrilla Girls obtained precise information about the skewed gender balance at exhibitions and in museum collections. With this data, and using circulation strategies that combined the discursiveness of the modern vanguards and conceptual art with the didacticism of political militancy, the collective produces humorous and persuasive posters they paste all over town.

One of their most emblematic posters, from 1984, featured a female nude with a gorilla head on a yellow background. Next to the figure we read the provocative caption “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”, followed by some facts and figures: “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female”.

After decades operating outside the art circuit and market, the Guerrilla Girls started exhibiting at major institutions, which included their posters in their collections. This move by no means weakened the group’s critical discourse. Quite the contrary, it broadened its reach and plugged it into networks, with some compelling results, such as Complaints Department (2016-). Initially created for the Tate Modern in London, a new version has been prepared for the second edition of Frestas, with a website (departamentodereclamacoes.com) and desk at the Sesc Sorocaba Recreational Center, where visitors can register their gripes, pet hates and criticisms on pretty much any topic they wish. This openness makes the “department” a soapbox for multiple voices and a gauge for the collective and institutional limits of listening.

[F.J.]