Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of radical feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the artworld. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community. The group employs culture jamming in the form of posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination and corruption. To remain anonymous, members don gorilla masks and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists. According to GG1, identities are concealed because issues matter more than individual identities, "[M]ainlly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work."

In the spring of 1985, seven women launched the Guerrilla Girls in response to the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture" [1984), whose roster of 165 artists included only 13 women. Inaugurating MoMA's newly renovated and expanded building, this exhibition claimed to survey that era's most important painters and sculptors from 17 countries. The proportion of artists of color was even smaller, none of whom were women.

A comment by the show's curator, Kynaston McShine, further highlights that era's explicit artworld gender bias: "Kynaston McShine gave interviews saying that any artist who wasn’t in the show should rethink ‘his’ career." In reaction to the exhibition and McShine's overt bias, they protested in front of MoMA. Thus, the Guerrilla Girls were born.

When the protests yielded little success, the Guerrilla Girls wheat-pasted posters throughout downtown Manhattan, particularly in the SoHo and East Village neighborhoods.

Soon after, the group expanded their focus to include racism in the artworld, attracting artists of color. They also took on projects outside of New York, enabling them to address sexism and racism nationally and internationally. Though the art world has remained the group's main focus, the Guerrilla Girls' agenda has included sexism and racism in films, mass and popular culture, and politics. Tokenism also represents a major group concern.