Guerrilla Girls: Reinventing the “F” word: feminism!

Gorilla masks cover the face of this group of female artists that have been fighting sexism and racism in the world of art since 1985. Formed originally in New York City, the group has become international through the years. The group has created posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination and corruption.

It was in 1985 when MoMA launched a new exhibition named “An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” in which out of the 165 artists that it featured only 13 were women, that Guerilla Girls first appeared. Seven women protested the exhibition outside of MoMa and covered the city with posters. From then on, the Guerilla Girls movement has been fighting for representation in the art world.

The Gorilla mask has now become the symbol of the movement when asked about the origins of it the girls answered: “We were Guerrillas before we were Gorillas. From the beginning, the press wanted publicity photos. We needed a disguise. No one remembers, for sure, how we got our fur, but one story is that at an early meeting, an original girl, a bad speller, wrote ‘Gorilla’ instead of ‘Guerrilla.’ It was an enlightened mistake. It gave us our ‘mask-ulinity.’

Their wide of range of work has covered issues of representation in the Arts around the world. Take a look at some of their pieces below: