October 1 - 22, 2020

The Guerrilla Girls are a feminist, activist artist collective committed to fighting injustice in the arts. They wear signature gorilla masks in public and take on the names of dead women artists to remain anonymous. Founded in New York City in 1985, they began by flyposting text and photo-based messages on the streets of SoHo to call attention to discriminatory practices by galleries and museums towards women. They use stickers, flyers, and advertising campaigns full of facts, humor, and outrageous visuals to expose bias and corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. They create works of art that reveal the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. The Guerrilla Girls believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders.

This exhibition features works made by the Guerrilla Girls from 1985 - 2016 and explores the artist collective’s battle for gender and racial equality in the art world. A detailed look at text and photo-based activist works that use statistics and humor to shock and reveal exposes underlying issues of power and representation in the arts, and chronicles the Guerrilla Girls’ history of institutional critique in the field of contemporary art.

Curated by Anna Toptchi.

Exhibition Essay

Learn more about the Guerrilla Girls

Affiliated Exhibition Programming

October 2: "Illustrating the Resistance: The Feminist Activism of Women Artists in Late 1930s China," lecture by UofSC Art History professor Amanda Wangwright, Ph.D. 
1:00 pm, Zoom. Register at: forms.gle/kETqNozYeACysmSd9

October 9:  A Virtual Evening with the Guerrilla Girls
7:00 pm, Zoom. Register online at columbiamuseum.org. Free and open to the public.

October 10:  Activist Art Workshop with the Guerrilla Girls
12:00 pm, Zoom.
Free and open to the public. Limited spots available. Registration opens on October 1 at 12:00 PM and operates on a first come, first served basis. Spots cannot be reserved in advance. Sign up for a spot here: forms.gle/uyZv8r9NLS8PFDrn6

These programs are part of the Justice Theme Semester in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Support comes from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Knight Foundation Fund at the Central Carolina Community Foundation, the Elizabeth M. Marion Visiting Artist Fund at the School of Visual Art and Design, and the Columbia Museum of Art.