ARTSpeak: The Guerrilla Girls

ARTSpeak: The Guerrilla Girls

In a rare New York appearance, internationally known feminist advocacy group the Guerrilla Girls are coming to FIT. For decades, the Guerrilla Girls have been drawing attention to the absence of representation of female artists in galleries and museums around the world. They wear gorilla masks to maintain anonymity because their focus is not on any individual artist but rather on the systemic problem of sexism in the art world more broadly.

"The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. Over 55 people have been members over the years, some for weeks, some for decades. Our anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who we might be. We wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders.

"We have done over 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Mexico City, Istanbul, London, Bilbao, Rotterdam, and Shanghai, to name just a few. We also do projects and exhibitions at museums, attacking them for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices right on their own walls, including our 2015 stealth projection about income inequality and the super rich hijacking art on the façade of the Whitney Museum in New York.

"Our retrospectives in Bilbao and Madrid, Guerrilla Girls 1985-2015, and our U.S. traveling exhibition, Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready To Make Nice, have attracted thousands. We could be anyone. We are everywhere. What’s next? More creative complaining!! New projects in London, Paris, Cologne, and more!" —From the Guerrilla Girls website.

This event is part of the ARTSpeak 2017–2018 lecture series, The Creative Practitioner and the Expanded Studio, an interdisciplinary program presented by the departments of Fine Arts, History of Art, English and Communication Studies, and MFA in Fashion Design.

ARTSpeak is made possible in part through funding by the FIT Student-Faculty Corporation, the School of Art and Design, and the School of Liberal Arts.

School of Art and Design

2018-05-02

1:21:21

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