Artists by day, gorillas by night.Â
I’m sure you have a lot of questions – and so do the Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous feminist artists behind the masks. Questions like: Why do museums seem to prefer showcasing naked women rather than the works of actual female artists? Why do art history textbooks read more like biographies of old white men? And why, after all this time, are there still so few women in positions of power?Â
According to their website, the Guerilla Girls describe themselves as “anonymous artist activists who use disruptive headlines, outrageous visuals and killer statistics to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics and pop culture.” Even their name is a clever play on words: “guerrilla” – a term for irregular warfare – perfectly reflects the constant battle to carve out space for women in creative fields we’ve always contributed richly to.Â
The Guerrilla Girls know how to grab attention. Their creations are bold, colorful and anything but subtle. One of their most iconic pieces, Naked Through the Ages, reimagines Ingres’s famous Grande Odalisque by replacing the woman’s head with a gorilla mask. The accompanying text reads: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” Originally pasted on New York City buses, the poster has since appeared on streets, in dorms and in museums around the world.Â
The Guerrilla Girls even made their way into my art history lecture. In fact, it was the very first lecture we had, and my professor (shoutout Dr. Silveri!) introduced us to the cover of their book, The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, which features yet another reclining female nude wearing a gorilla mask. The image makes a powerful point and again brings into question why women’s bodies are ever-present in art, yet women artists themselves remain largely absent from its history. Â
Decades later, the Guerrilla Girls are still going strong. Sadly, their mission is still necessary. Between 2008 and 2020, a study of 31 U.S. museums found that only 11% of acquisitions and 14.9% of exhibitions featured works by female-identifying artists. And despite progress, their most famous question still holds weight: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”
In 1989, their poster claimed that only 5% of artists in MoMA’s collection were women, while 85% of the nudes on display were still female. The 2023 update? The percentages haven’t really changed.
Through humor, irony and a whole lot of gorilla masks, the Guerrilla Girls expose the art world’s gender inequality for exactly what it is – absurd. Their tongue-in-cheek activism challenges institutions that pride themselves on progess, reminding us that there’s still work to be done. Until women get an equal share of the canvas, you can count on the Guerrilla Girls to keep going to war.