Guerrilla Girls

Have you ever noticed how disproportionate the ratio of male to female artists are when walking around any art gallery/museum such as the Tate Modern, National Gallery or the Tate Britain? I certainly have and the Guerrilla Girls, a feminist group of artists also did, bringing them to the the forefront of the feminist art movement since the middle of the 20th century. Their story of sneaking out in the middle of the night to pin up their first posters(of which many were controversial) on to the streets of Soho, New York to how much attention and debate they quickly received is what I find so fascinating about them.

This poster above first appeared as an advert on the side of New York busses in 1989

Their thought provoking posters (which you have most likely seen before) are made even more intriguing due to the anonymity of this group making the viewer question society as a whole, as if this group are creating to represent all those discriminated against and marginalised in society which is still prevalent to this day. To remain anonymous the group wear gorilla masks and use pseudonyms to represent dead female artists such as Frida Kahlo. The reason behind their hidden identity is purely down to the fact that they believe that their message is more important than their individual identities and they don't want who they are to detract from their work in exposing these societal issues.

Some may not necessarily consider their work as art and think that anyone could throw some inspiring words on to a page but they are more than that; their sole purpose is to raise awareness and make people think and question the role of gender, age or ethnicity in the art industry as well as in society as a whole.

This poster above was published in 1988 to mock but also expose the art world as being a place in which female presence diminished dramatically in the 1980s with only 10% of the 169 artists work displayed in 'The International Survey of Painting and Sculpture' held at MoMA in 1984 being female artists. Through their wit and irony they introduced this idea of a double standard within their industry and targeted museums, dealers, critics and artists to expose a side of the art world that hadn't really been bought to the front of peoples attention on this larger scale before.

Their posters really make the viewer question the role of females in the artistic industry and even in this day and age what they stood for is still very relevant and has sparked many uncomfortable questions to be asked and controversial topics to be discussed over the past 40 years.

Frida Kahlo

You may have heard the name ‘Frida Kahlo’ mentioned before when discussing feminist icons, renowned women artists or merely due to the fact she had an extremely distinct feature to which she is acclaimed, her unibrow. However, even if her name isn’t entirely familiar, the story as to how this Mexican artist began her career, a single bus journey changing the course of her life, is awe inspiring…

Born in 1907, Kahlo grew up in Mexico City the daughter of a German Jew and local Mexican woman. At around the age of 18, Kahlo was involved in a bus crash proving fatal to many passengers on board and leaving her with serious injuries to both her spine and pelvis, as she was impaled by a steel handrail. Despite Kahlo’s miraculous survival, the accident left her in hospital for a month and bedridden at home for several months later to this, unable to move in a full body cast.

Imagine you are restricted to your bed for months on end, incapable of moving your own body, what would you do? I can imagine nowadays the majority of teenagers, myself included, would fall into a depressive slump, turning to their devices as their sole companion, feeling sorry for themselves and experiencing an excruciating level of boredom.

Kahlo on the other hand said, ‘I was bored as hell with my plaster, so I decided to do something’ and what she did from this boredom was extraordinary. Kahlo used the time during her slow recovery to teach herself how to paint, attaching a mirror above her bed in order to create self-portraits and using the plaster cast covering her body, as her paper and canvas. Her parents then made her a special easel and gave her paints and brushes in order for her to be able to paint more easily in bed. Kahlo’s independence is unbelievably impressive, how she used her accident to find a new passion, a new drive to turn her unfortunate circumstance into something creative and exciting. During her time in her cast she said ‘I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to live as long as I can paint’. Instead of feeling pitiful and dejected, Kahlo remained positive and she continued to paint throughout her stages of recovery, in her wheelchair through to when she finally could walk again.

The obstacles in Frida’s life certainly did not lessen as she recovered from her immobility; joining the communist party, she married party leader Diego Riviera, prolific womanizer. Their relationship was pervaded in scandalous affairs due to his relentless cheating and lies, worsened only by the heart-breaking revelation Kahlo could not have children, as a result of her accident, causing a number of tragic miscarriages, leaving Kahlo feeling empty and alone.

Amidst all the anguish and misery Kahlo continued to paint her self-portraits. As many artists, she used her own experiences to convey intense and often macabre thoughts and emotions in her work, yet she was one of the first female artists that made it legitimate for women to outwardly express their pain. Her paintings are deeply personal conveying, predominantly through symbolism, ideas of challenging stereotypical views of femininity, the pain of her miscarriages and divorce and feelings of conflicted identity.

Kahlo experienced immense suffering and loss in her life, yet she used this to transform herself from a Mexican schoolgirl wishing to become a doctor, into one of the world’s most incredible female artists. To me, she is an inspiration to all those facing obstacles in their lives, to transform a disastrous event into something creative and thought provoking, to persevere despite believing you can't.