Guerrilla Girls to share their irreverent art-activist tactics, actions on campus

By Linda Myers

Warning: A band of women wearing gorilla masks will be prowling about campus next Friday.

Five of the anonymous Guerrilla Girls in front of some of their art-activist posters. Courtesy of the Johnson Museum

Known as the Guerrilla Girls -- as in hit-and-run, not hairy jungle beast -- this feisty, funny troupe of art activists, who bill themselves as the "conscience of the art world," have been testing the limits since 1985 through their political and artistic statements on the exclusion of women and minorities from the mainstream art scene. They will share their tactics and actions in a presentation to the Cornell community next Friday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. in Kennedy Hall's Call Alumni Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Fans of the Guerrilla Girls say that the art establishment is no match for them. "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" asks one of their more provocative posters. It features Ingres' "Odalisque" (one of the most revered paintings by the 19th-century master), but with this difference -- the languidly posed full-body nude woman wears the GGs' trademark gorilla mask and holds a phallic-shaped vibrator in place of the feminine fan in the original. The poster goes on to note that, "less than 5 percent of the artists in the modern art sections are women, but 85 percent of the nudes are female." Rejected by the Public Art Fund, the poster showed up on the sides of New York City buses several years ago -- until the bus company canceled the GGs' lease, telling them that the image was too suggestive.

Describing themselves as "feminist counterparts to the mostly male tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Batman and the Lone Ranger," the GGs state that they wear gorilla masks "to focus on the issues rather than personalities" and to create mystery ("we could be anyone; we are everywhere," they declare on their web site). So far, they have produced more than 80 posters, printed projects and actions, which have circulated worldwide. Their main tool is humor, which they use to "convey information, provoke discussion and show that feminists can be funny."

The Guerrilla Girls' campus visit is sponsored by a range of Cornell groups, among them the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (the new name of the Women's Studies Program, pending approval from Cornell's Faculty Senate), the Cornell Women's Resource Center and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

"We wanted a splashy, exciting event to celebrate our new title and curriculum," said Professor Sandra Bem, director of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. "The major has changed dramatically," with a structured series of courses to choose from that reflect the commonly held view of the planners that "gender and sexuality need to be studied in relation to one another, to the oppression of women and sexual minorities and to other structures of privilege and oppression, especially racism and class exploitation," Bem reported.

For information on the Guerrilla Girls visit, contact Kelly Connison, director of Cornell's Women's Resource Center, 255-0015.