The Guerrilla Girls define themselves as a feminist activist group “using facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture.” The group of anonymous activists well known for wearing a gorilla mask in public appearances was formed in 1985 in the aftermath of protests in response to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1984. Titled An International Survey of Recent Paintings and Sculpture, curated by Kynaston McShine, it included 165 artists, only 13 of them women.
MASP presents a full retrospective of 116 works, including two new Brazilian ones, based on GG’s most well know posters. They both speak about the difficulties of being a woman artist in a male dominated art world/history: The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (1988, 2017) and Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met (1989) and now into the MASP (2017). In the latter, the play is with the contrast between the small number of female artists in comparison to the high number of female nudes in the collection display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (5% and 85% in 1989, 4% and 76% in 2011) and at the MASP (6% and 60% in 2017). Although MASP does rather well in comparison to the Met, the story would be very different if we were to count the large number of female nudes by Brazilian modernist Pedro Correia de Araujo (1881-1952) on view in the gallery down below through November 18.
The discourse that arises from the GGs ‘posters over 32 years can be framed within the discourse around identity politics and multiculturalism at the end of the 1980s, particularly in the United States. The concern for a fairer balance of female and male artists in modern and contemporary art has become an art world norm. In museums and in art history, much of the renewed interest we see in women artists, artists of color, or artists working outside Euroamerica echoes the discourse of the GGs. In Brazil, we feel enormously privileged to possess an art history that is dominated by leading female figures—from modernists Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfati, to mid-century figures such as Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and Mira Schendel, to name only a few that have entered definitely into the canon. Much work still needs to be done, particularly in terms of artists (and curators) of African and Amerindian descent, as well as those coming from less privileged backgrounds.
It is interesting to consider how the humorous discourse of the GGs comes into play with deeper questions concerning Eurocentrism, white privilege, heteronormativity, and male dominance. Despite the numerous and at times conflicting waves of feminism and LGBT politics, and the black and indigenous movements, it is important to work towards a multiple, diverse and plural alliance between minorities that are oppressed by white, male, heterosexual and privileged dominance. It is not a matter of turning these discourses into a single, homogenous one, but of developing a practice that carves out spaces and platforms for others to speak and express their ideas, needs, desires, and cultures. As well as to show their art.
CURATED BY Adriano Pedrosa, Artist Director, MASP; Camila Bechelany, Assistent Curator, MASP.
