By bbotany
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18/07/2022

Portrait: Who are the Guerilla Girls?

Each month, she returns to the fate of women who have changed the face of the world.Who are the Guerilla Girls?

No one really knows who they are or how much they are.Anonymous, artists, feminists and downright not happy at all, that's how we can summarize them.Their "nicknames", they borrow them from the few rare known, recognized and unknown women in art history: Kathe Kollwitz, Frida Kahlo, Hannah Höch, Rosalba Carriera ...

Since 1985, the year of their first shots, 55 members have followed one another, all identified and co -opted by an old one.Some have passed for a few weeks, others have been leading the movement for years.Behind the gorilla masks, the Guerilla Girls are artists who want to focus on the cause (intersectional feminism) without being bored in their job and their private life.In real life: a missed act.When writing "Guerrilla Girls", the daughter responsible for noting it misunderstood."Gorilla/Guerilla", the figure on tamed wild monkey is finally adopted.To justify this choice, they refer to a news from Kafka, "A report to an academy" (history, a monkey who, after having learned to behave like a human, explains to academicians how he got there), in the figure of wild virility like King Kong, and finally to male domination.

In 1985, they were born and demonstrated in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, to signify the lack of works by female gender artists and various origins in the museum's collections. The retrospective titled "An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture" had only 13 women out of 169 artists. It is the beginning of a long series of statements, cries, glued posters including the one that passes them famous: the large odalisque of ingres elongated and surmounted by a gorilla head and this declaration: "Women Should they be naked to enter the Met. Museum (New York)? Less than 5 % of the artists of modern art sections are women, but 85 % of nudes are female. In their statement and in the official press release - all in irony - they launch, shock sentences reminiscent of the realities of women artists. “The advantages of being an artist woman: working without undergoing the pressure of success; No obligation to exhibit with men; Leading four extra maruses that will offer escape possibilities; A career that can take off when you are 80 years old; The certainty that whatever you do, your art will always be considered feminine. No hands bound by a university professor position; your ideas that flourish in the works of others; The chance to be able to choose between career and maternity. No obligation to smoke large cigars or paint in Italian costumes. No risk of being considered a genius. Your portrait in an art magazine disguised as a gorilla. »»

Portrait : qui sont les Guerilla Girls ?

Over the years, their feminism is affirmed, refines and unfolds with anti -racist, anti -colonial demands."Reinventing the F Word" becomes one of their main slogans, inviting to reinterpret the word feminism that tense and frighten.They launch "Weenie Counts" ("the account of the quequettes"), and establish an inventory and the ratio between the works of male and female artists in museum collections.

Now just gotta figure out how to add halo/doom themed text to it @BigManChief @slayer_bg https://t.co/IOewzZQd2x
— Shen Goldenheart (Trinity Aspect form) Tue Feb 09 04:24:25 +0000 2021

Ironically or genius, institutions from around the world (MoMA, Tate Modern, Center Pompidou) consider them an artistic movement in its own right.They are exhibited, publish works, divert images as with the "Guerrilla Girl’s Museum Activity Book" and its playful activities revealing the inequalities of museum collections.

Towards the end of the 1990s, the group split: Guerrillagirlsbroadband and their interactive multimedia events, Guerrilla Girls on Tour and their theatrical performances ... From the pandemic, they ensure statements and workshops with activism by zoom.Grrrrrr.