"We spell it like the freedom fighters": A Conversation with the Guerrilla Girls - feminist artists and activists - Interview

Suzi Gablik: in like manner what's the best and what's the worst thing about being a Guerrilla Girl?

Romaine Brooks: The best thing is, we delight in traveling. Doing gigs is quite a destiny of fun--we've seen a fate of the world.

Both: Join the Guerrilla Girls and diocese the world!

RB: In the last pair of years, the Guerrilla Girls have been invited to Australia, Finland, England, Germany and Austria. We've had a allotment of fun, but it also displays that there's an incredible appetite for hearing what we have to say. For instance, we just went to Austria, and I think we met each feminist in Austria when we were there. A destiny of them didn't even know who the Guerrilla Girls were--they weren't artists. on the other hand it's such a powerful image to women that I felt like we energized and juiced up these women because there's with equal reason little support for feminists, and feminism, in a certain quantity of of these places.

Guerrilla Girl I: The reason that we're invited to all these places--a allotment of universities in the U as well as places in Europe and we went to Brazil, too--is because of the great ne and, obviously, the great interest in our issues.

SG: Let's talk about those issues a bit.

GGI: And about all the changes that we have initiated, by the agency of the way--and that we take replete credit for, I might add. (Laughter)

SG: OK! Let's have a little rundown upon what that is.

RB: individual thing is that we did a critique of the Whitney Biennial a number of years ago, at the Clocktower in fresh York, where we gave all these statistics revealing by what mode sexist and racist all the Whitney Biennials have been. Well, the greatest in quantity recent Whitney Biennial [A.i.A., May '93] is 40 percent women and it's probably 35 percent artists of color, and I'd say we really take replete credit for this. Things that we've been pounding upon and talking about for years are finally bearing a certain number of fruit.

GGI: Peter Plagens actually wrote in Newsweek to the consequence that the images in the Whitney exhibit looked like the New York column edited by the Guerrilla Girls. I think it's a measure of our influence that he characterized the display by using us as a generic reference

SG: I know that humor is a primary composing of your work, but in what way in a serious mode, would you aggregate amount up your mission?

GGI: In 1984 the Museum of fresh Art opened with an international painting and statuary show. There were 166 tribe in that show, and alone about 16 were women--so that was 10 percent or les and we knew we were in reaching far down shit. So we started the Guerrilla Girls, because we felt that critics, artists, curators and dealers are all responsible for this problem--the underrepresentation of women in the art world. We wanted to target those who were responsible for a apportionment of the problem and make them accountable for the solution. Our goal is for more women artists to be exhibited in terms of their sensibility within the art world.

SG: Give me a little bird's-eye view here--even notwithstanding that I know everything has to stay anonymous--tell me what you can about the day all this got started. I mean, who was there, what happened? Who dreamed it up?

GGI: Oh God! This is like talking about the beginning of the earth.

RB: It was actually a combination of older feminists and younger feminists.

SG: Were you sum of two units in on the very beginning?

RB: I was not.

SG: Was there a single individual who could be identified if that were allowed, who reflection this up?

GGI: No, it's a collection What happened was we worked without how we wanted to package it all, and the Guerrilla Girls just have the appearanceed like a great idea, in metes of the double meaning of the word--"gorilla," the animal and "guerrilla," the action. We incantation it like the freedom fighters, on the other hand then we wear gorilla masks, in the way that that it works imagistically. It's true effective. You have this angry gorilla image combined with a female body--and the women have reason to be angry. in the way that when you see the image, you think of what the Guerrilla Girls stand for: we intend to be the conscience of the art world.

RB: It was also to take feminism, which at that point was becoming a dirty word, and to make it sexy to make it funny

GGI: And to make it actual positive.

SG: with equal reason has any of this anger that you started not on with abated somewhat, given a certain quantity of of the changes in the art world?

RB: I'd say we've achieved a certain number of successes but I think the anger continues, because of the backlash against feminism, and because of the recession of the '90s; I mean, the opportunities for artists across the board are plenteous worse than they were in the '80 In a certain number of ways we can point to situations like the Whitney Biennial and say that things have gotten better, on the other hand in fact, the times are really difficult for artists--particularly for women artists and artists of color. We contemplation we'd be able to pass back to the jungle by the agency of now, but it seems we can't.

SG: The times are certainly difficult, on the other hand as you yourself said earlier, in certain honors they are getting much better. It certainly present the appearances as if there are vast changes going upon in the art world these days.

RB: It's true--but individual wants more.