Guerrilla Girls

The Whitechapel Gallery has commissioned the Guerrilla Girls to create a new artwork as part of an archive display at the Gallery. Following their 1986 poster which states It’s Even Worse in Europe, the new work will present the results of fresh research based on questionnaires sent to over 400 European museum directors in 2016, including the Whitechapel Gallery.

The questions relate to the representation of artists in recent exhibitions who are female, gender nonconforming or from Africa, Asia, South Asia and South America. The Guerrilla Girls will examine the responses and present new statistics on the state of museums and galleries in Europe.

According to The Guerrilla Girls, “With this project, we wanted to pose the question ‘Are museums today presenting a diverse history of contemporary art or the history of money and power?’ Our research into this will be presented at Whitechapel Gallery this fall.”

A broad range of research and production materials to illuminate the group’s inner workings will go on display to coincide with the new art work, which will be on display until 5 March 2017. The Guerrilla Girls will give a special public presentation at the Whitechapel Gallery about their 31 years of activist work on 1 October.

Coinciding with this new commission and exhibition, the Guerrilla Girls will also lead a week-long major public project at Tate Modern (4-9 Oct.), as part of Tate Exchange.

The Guerrilla Girls, a group of anonymous, feminist activists was founded in 1985. Each member takes the name of a dead woman artist as a pseudonym and in public their identities are hidden under gorilla masks. Using facts, humour and fake fur, they produce posters, banners, stickers, billboards, projections and other public projects that expose sexism, racism and corruption in art, film, politics and the culture at large.

Guerrilla Girls: Is it even worse in Europe? is co-curated by Nayia Yiakoumaki, Curator: Archive Gallery, Project Manager: NEON Curatorial Exchange & Award, Whitechapel Gallery and Xabier Arakistain, an art curator who lives and works in Bilbao, Spain.