Location: Whitechapel Gallery, London
Date: 1st October 2016 to 5th March 2017
Admission: Free
The Guerrilla Girls are back in town … and they mean business.
A group originally conceived back in 1985 in New York City, the Guerrilla Girls are a network of feminist activists with one aim: to unmask the sexism, racism and discrimination at play in art, politics and film. Ironically, unlike the revelatory nature of their work, the women choose to hide their identities, their faces concealed behind theatrical gorilla masks. As the Guerrilla Girls so perfectly put it, they are the “anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman”. These modern age super-heroines are on a mission to promote intersectional feminism and reinvent the F word.
Their most recent exhibition in London, at the Whitechapel Gallery, hopes to expose the inequalities and corruption present in the European art world. The central idea of the exhibit is simple yet undeniably powerful. The Guerrilla Girls sent out over 400 questionnaires to art institutions asking for statistics concerning their representation of female, black and gender non-conforming artists. The response, which forms the body of the exhibit, was shocking.
(Photo Credit: www.spark.com)
Only ¼ of the institutions responded. (The names of those who did not reply, including our beloved Saatchi Gallery, were printed on the floor with the comedic instruction from the Guerrilla Girls to “walk all over them”.) Of these, only 2 museums have 40% or more women artists in their collection. Sadly, these findings echo similar statistics from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but women make up 76% of the nudes.
(Photo Credit: www.spark.com)
Whilst the exhibition is confined to a single room on the first floor of the Whitechapel Gallery, it still packs a punch. Bright orange and yellow billboards line the walls, each one highlighting another shocking fact or statistic. Individual copies of the returned questionnaires are plastered all over the room with the addition of humorous commentary from our leading ladies. In response to the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art in Athens stating, “It is not the gender that makes a good artist”, the Girls write: “What planet do YOU live on?” As the DESTE are one of the 21 museums in Europe who represent fewer than 20% women artists, I think the Guerrilla Girls have a point.
Whilst the Guerrilla Girls are pioneering a new artistic movement that exposes the inequalities at work in our renowned cultural institutions, they cannot do it alone. We too must challenge and dismantle this white, patriarchal narrative that dominates Western culture.
If you find yourself in London anytime soon then I strongly advise you to visit this exhibit. You will not be disappointed. Go along, show your support and spread the word. #GuerrillaGirls