PROBE

The Guerrilla Girls

Interview by Alyce Wilson

More information about their activities, as well as the opportunity to order posters or T-shirts, can be found at their excellent site.

GG: The Guerrilla Girls fight discrimination with facts and humor. We attempt to reveal the hypocrisy, conservatism and corruption in cultural and political institutions. Humor helps us present issues in unexpected, intrusive ways. We don't do posters and actions that simply point to something and say "This is bad," as does a lot of political art. We try to use information in a surprising, transgressive manner to prove our case. We believe that some discrimination is conscious and some is unconscious and that we can embarrass some of the perpetrators into changing their ways. This has proved true in the art world: things are better now than they ever have been for women and artists of color and we have helped effect that change. (We are still condemning the art world for its lack of ethics, tokenism and other bad behavior.) We also have done campaigns about the film world, theater, homelessness, abortion, and war, among many other issues.

ALYCE: The humor behind the Guerrilla Girls' tactics is particularly evident in the gorilla suits you wear at public appearances. Besides being a natural pun, how did the gorilla masks come about, and what's the purpose behind the anonymity that characterizes the Guerrilla Girls' actions?

GG: Our work was an immediate sensation when it hit the streets of NY in 1985. Reporters wanted to interview us, people wanted to hear us speak. What's an anonymous group to do? We started out wearing ski masks, but one day a member who couldn't spell wrote Gorilla instead of Guerrilla and our identity was born.

In the beginning, we decided to be anonymous for purely self serving reasons: the art world was a small place and we were afraid our careers would suffer. But we quickly realized that anonymity was an important ingredient to our success. First, it keeps the focus on the issues, not on our work or personalities. Second, the mystery surrounding our identities has attracted attention, which is helpful to our cause. We could be anyone...and we are.

ALYCE: What kind of response have you been receiving so far with your public appearances? Where are you appearing next?

GG: We usually get amazingly responsive crowds of 200 to 1,500 at schools and museums all over the world. In the next few months we'll be in Ohio, California, Nebraska, Oregon, Rhode Island, Maryland, Missouri and many more places. Last year we were in Bilbao, Vienna, Michigan, North Carolina and many more.

ALYCE: I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as coincidence. Cleaning out some old magazines, I found an indie mag from Minnesota I'd picked up six years ago, featuring an interview with the Guerrilla Girls. Then, a week later, I was reading "Bitch" and saw another article which mentioned you. So naturally, I not only had to interview you but also was thinking about your messages as I recently visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There, not only are there precious few female artists, but women like Mary Cassatt are relegated to a dark, practically hidden corner of the Impressionists gallery; and the only Georgia O'Keefe painting is displayed right next to a doorway where it can be easily ignored and is also more susceptible to frequent changes in temperature. Have you ever performed or considered any actions specific to the Philadelphia Museum of Art?

GG: We performed there many years ago. But we'd better get back there quick.

ALYCE: The Guerrilla Girls are also against the, for lack of a better term, fracturing of the art world, where woman and minorities are relegated only to "special showings" on Women's History Month, Black History Month, et cetera. But until women are more widely represented in mainstream museums, is it just as important to support independent museums or display spaces? Or are they both important?

GG: Yes.

ALYCE: In recent years, you've taken up one of my pet peeves: Hollywood's treatment of women. Could you weigh in on what I've seen as a disturbing trend, where actresses who start out in stronger female roles, such as Reese Witherspoon in "Freeway" or "Election", become famous and immediately drop 30 pounds along with, apparently, 30 IQ points ("Legally Blonde"). Do you think lobotomies will be the next hot Hollywood body modification?

GG: Actresses don't need lobotomies. They can just act stupid.

ALYCE: Here are some actresses that follow the trend. Consider Jennifer Connolly's roles in the classic girl adventure film "Labyrinth", compared to her waifish, compliant role in "A Beautiful Mind." Or character actor Brittany Murphy, who's gone from playing a range of roles ("Girl, Interrupted," "Trixie," "Sidewalks of New York") to being Eminem's emaciated sidekick in "8 Mile." Do you agree, disagree, care to add some others?

GG: There are very few good roles for young women and even fewer for women over 40. About "A Beautiful Mind," what pissed us off was that the real woman Jennifer Connolly portrayed was a Latina, but the film completely whitewashed her ethnicity.

ALYCE: How responsible should artists, actors and writers be for their own empowerment? What are the dangers inherent in "going with the flow" in order to garner fame?

GG: Our message has always been that we are all responsible for the way things are so we all better do something, however small, to try to change things. It's really hard to make in in any creative field, though, so its hard to condemn someone for going with the flow.

ALYCE: I propose a new field for your activism: women in music. I was more than a little irked by the recent "Women in Rock" issue by "Rolling Stone" which featured such "artists" as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera but which left out Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde! If you had a message for the music world about women, what might it be?

GG: You're right about no such thing as coincidence. We're collecting stats about women in music and are planning to do a sticker and poster campaign.

Graphics courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls