The Guerrilla Girls aren’t shy to providing criticism: the anonymous feminist art collective has been willing to call out major players in the art world since its 1985 formation. Now, after more than three decades, the group has been given their first dedicated show in the United Kingdom. Over the summer, the group will be scrutinizing over 400 European galleries to answer the question that is their exhibition’s title: “Is it even worse in Europe?”
The “it” in question is representation. The Guerrilla Girls launched to fame by criticizing art galleries who lacked a female presence. Since then, the women have expanded their work to target universities, art sellers, and the film industry. In most of these works, they discovered an unfortunate truth: women are 17 times more likely to be in a museum as a nude subject than as an artist.
In a Milwaukee, Wisconsin show, the Guerrilla Girls continued to challenge the art world to represent women. Their evolving mission started on this same point in New York in 1985 (Judy Griesedieck/MPR News).
The women will be featured at London’s Whitechapel Gallery from October 2016 to March 2017. Though it seems strange for a gallery to feature well-known critics of such institutions, the Guerrilla Girls found an ally in the Whitechapel Gallery’s director, Iwona Blazwick.
“I was just at the Kunstmuseum in Basel where they have just rehung the entire collection from 1900 to the present and I think there are five women,” Blazwick told The Guardian. “Sadly it is still an issue.”
Europe desperately needs foreign aid and the Guerrilla Girls would love to administer it!
The Girls, who have deemed themselves “the conscience of the art world,” are all artists, curators, gallery workers, or otherwise involved in the business of art. However, each woman takes the name of a deceased female artist as a pseudonym while working in the collective. To maintain their anonymity, they wear gorilla masks when on business for the collective.
Though they started in New York, the Guerrilla Girls’ focus has become global (Guerrilla Girls).
Beginning in the United States, the Guerrilla Girls quickly turned their attention globally. A 1986 piece simply stated, “It’s even worse in Europe.” In a statement accompanying the work, the collective mentioned that, without even mentioning what “it” was, the message was clear:
“We have been invited to speak all over Europe and have noticed that women artists hardly ever get shown there. Nearly all the money their governments spend on art and it’s a lot more than the US government spends goes to less than half the population….the white male part. Europe desperately needs foreign aid and the Guerrilla Girls would love to administer it!”
Three decades later, the women are returning to Europe to see if their 1986 statement is still true.
Today the Guerrilla Girls’ mission has expanded to include representation of gender non-conforming artists as well as artists of color. Their exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery will be presented beside a solo exhibition of William Kentridge. Kentridge is an ethnically Jewish South African artist who addresses inequality, both in and beyond apartheid.
“Is it even worse in Europe?” will be exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery from October 1, 2016 to March 5, 2017. Admission is free. For full information click here.