The Guerrilla Girls: 30 Years of Art Activism and Counting

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Guerrilla Girls, We Sell White Bread, 1987 Photograph Courtesy the Artists

The revolutionary all-female person fine art collective turns 30 this year, and they're mark the anniversary with a new, attitude-laden exhibit at the Walker Fine art Center

Who? They depict themselves as the 'conscience of the fine art earth', donning gorilla masks to conceal their identity in a witty play on words, and in light of the magnificent touch on the Guerrilla Girls have had on the art industry over the past 30 years, they might well be correct.

The all-female art collective get-go formed in 1985, with a view to fight the ubiquitous racism and sexism which traditionally underpins the art globe. "We're feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman," they say on their website. "How do nosotros betrayal sexism, racism and abuse in politics, fine art, film and pop civilisation? With facts, humor and outrageous visuals. Nosotros reveal the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair."

Anonymity and activism are at the cadre of the Guerrilla Girls' behavior; as a function of their desire to remain unknown, each member has adopted a pseudonym subsequently a historic expressionless female artist or collector who pushed the boundaries in her own career, from Frida Kahlo and Gertrude Stein to Méret Oppenheim, to proper name just a few.

What? In 1984, a group of women artists noted the staggering inequality in the representation of male to female artists, while visiting an exhibition entitled International Survey of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Mod Art in New York. They decided to accept activeness.

Adopting the familiar visual language employed in advertising, the Guerrilla Girls began creating controversial posters and paying for them to exist displayed in highly visible spots around New York. Such posters often appropriated famous works from art history of fine art. One, for instance, took a famous painting of a concubine, La Grande Odalisque by French neoclassical painter Ingres, and replaced the woman's caput with that of a gorilla, graffiti-ing it so that she reclines next to the words 'Do Women accept to be naked to go into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.'

The Guerrilla Girls have built a reputation on their fearlessness. They shame museums and artists into correcting their sexist errors – one such slice being a affiche which lists names of all the male artists who allow their works to be displayed in galleries in which women artists are visibly missing. The posters are strong, unproblematic and striking, allowing the message to be communicated with a frank sincerity. Having established themselves equally the doyennes of feminist art in the 1980s, the Guerrilla Girls moved on to tackle further issues, such as racial discrimination in the art world, and misogyny in the entertainment industry. Since their formation, the commonage has produced more than 90 posters, three books, and an enormous number of stickers and printed projects.

Why? This year marks the Guerrilla Girls' 30th ceremony. When they first began their war on the art world, their main frustration was with museums' lack of willing to address the underrepresentation of female artists. Thanks to the controversial methods used past the Guerrilla Girls, however, many accept now been forced to reconsider their displays, exhibition schedules and acquisition policies, with these issues firmly in mind.

As if to demonstrate the ubiquity of their work, in 2006 Tate Modern hosted a display devoted to the Guerrilla Girls, and in 2014 the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired a large portfolio of their posters and feminist art ephemera. The Guerrilla Girls take inspired countless women artists to fly the flag for feminism, from New York-based female art collective Pussy Galore, to the Bunny Collective, a group which formed in 2013 in order to focus on ideas gender, trunk and sexuality. Equally just ane office of their connected mission, in 2016 the Guerrilla Girls will host a Twin Cities Takeover, during which the Walker Art Middle in Minneapolis will display a selection of posters from the dynamic feminist art collective. 30 years after their initial grouping, the Guerrilla Girls show no signs of slowing: on the contrary, one gets the impression they're just getting started.

Art at the Center: Guerrilla Girls is on bear witness at the Walker Art Center from January 21 until December 31, 2016.