Guerrilla Girls

For this blog post I have read Guerrilla Girls On Tour report “Special Report From Europe 2010- Slovenia, Hungary and Greece” and also visited Guerrilla Girls exhibition “Is it even worse in Europe?” in Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Guerrilla girls are group of anonymous feminist activist artists. The are women who wear gorilla masks in public using facts, humour and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. They have done over 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world and they have also done projects and exhibitions at museums. One of my first thoughts was why they are hiding behind the gorilla masks, but they explain that they use the masks to keep the focus on the issues, and away from who they might be (Guerrilla Girls, 1985). 

I did not have heard of this group before I read the article. The report has been written like a diary. The article covers three European countries with different cultures defining women´s status in that country and they also explore food culture, people, local area, thoughts, art and architecture.  In they approach issues that women faces by workshop with 20 female artists or students. They do group brainstorming and then in Slovenia and Hungary they were divided to groups to great a slogan and live performance to address they subject like example stereotyping of female role.  In Greece they had to take different kind of approach, because of bad economy situation. They decided to make posters instead of the performance.  It seems that along with performing art and spreading awareness in art socially, they are also interested explore new places or countries by travel, photography, tasting local food, local culture, people, behaviour.

The exhibition “Guerrilla Girls: Is it even worse in Europe?” with its very powerful subject was fitted to in small room. The exhibition showed the latest research via posters consist of the responses to questionnaires, which were sent to 383 directors about their exhibitions programme and collections all over Europe.  The questions were example about how many female artists the cultural institutions were using (Guerrilla Girls Exhibition, 2016). I think they had really different way to approach people with the subjects of women rights. The whole space was used with effective way.  You were also able to sit down and read the actual surveys, (some of them were answered with they answer´s own hand writing), they received fro different museums all over from Europe. I´m actually really surprised that why one of the Helsinki´s landmark Museums, Kiasma from Finland did not apply to this questionnaire.  I´m just also wondering would I have got their message that well through the exhibition if I had not read their report before the exhibition. 
 
In my opinion the article is meant for all women, artists, designers and it is also really good example of different ways to make research.  The article and the exhibition is also good way to show to men how we women are feeling and I think Guerrilla Girls have also shown behave all of women that we are fitting for our rights and we don´t want to be separated from men. It is also our privilege to be talking about this subject. What could be done to spread this to those other countries that do not may have the same opportunities to be talking about this subject out of Europe? And what will make women to keep fighting to get the same treatment then men example why women´s salary is smaller then men? 

Picture of Chanel Ready To Wear Collection Spring Summer 2015 (Elman S, 2015), where end of the show models and Karl Lagerfield walk through the catwalk protesting Women´s rights.

References:
Girls, G (1985) OUR STORY. Available at: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/our-story/ (Accessed: 10 October 2016)

Girls, G Exhibition (2016) Is it even worse in Europe? Available at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/guerrilla-girls/ (Accessed: 10 October 2016)

Special Report From Europe 2010- Slovenia, Hungary and Greece

Elman S. (2015) Chanel Ready To Wear Collection Spring Summer 2015 Available at: http://pinstake.com/chanel-ready-to-wear-spring-summer-2015-archives-sara-elman/aHR0cDp8fHNhcmFlbG1hbl5jb218d3AtY29udGVudHx1cGxvYWRzfDIwMTR8MTB8NDU2MzY5MDMyXmpwZw==/ (Downloaded 10 October 2016)