The Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous, collaborative group of women artists who fight discrimination in the art world spoke to students as a part of the Distinguished Lecture Series in the Wisconsin Union Theater, Tuesday.
In order to protect their professional careers, the Guerrilla Girls wear gorilla masks in public to conceal their identities.
In addition, each member of the group adopts the name of a dead female artist instead of using their legal names.
“We do this so the audience focuses on the issues rather than our personalities,” said Gertrude Stein, a member of the Guerrilla Girls.
The Guerrilla Girls began in 1985 and currently has 28 female members of all different races and sexual orientations.
“We make sure that groups of minorities are represented 50-50,” Stein said.
The group has dubbed themselves to be the “conscience of the art world.”
In order to present their ideas, they have written two books and made over 80 posters.
Stein said the posters demonstrate discrimination in art and also “name names” of perpetrators of prejudice.
In addition to posters, the group also speaks to the public using humor and satire in order to convey their information, promote discussion and show that feminists can be funny.
“In the future, we are planning on tackling the entire cultural spectrum with issues from the government to the workplace,” Stein said.
Helen Klebesadel, introductory speaker for the event and representative of the Women’s Studies Consortium at UW, said the success of the Guerrilla Girls is due to their willingness to go to extreme measures to get people to listen to their ideas.
“They just figured out that they needed to wear a gorilla mask to get attention,” she said.
Klebesadel said it is important for students to attend events such as the Guerrilla Girls lecture.
“People need to expose themselves to information and learn about these issues,” she said.
UW senior Karen Gordon agreed, and said the event was both informative and entertaining.
“[The Guerrilla Girls] talked about a discrimination that people don’t necessarily think about nowadays,” she said.
Lillian Ader, a UW graduate student, said she found the lecture to be inspiring because she hopes to be an educator.
“We need to hear more women with voices who know how to articulate themselves as role models,” she said.
UW sophomore Ryan Flynn said although the lecture was interesting and unique, he does not strongly support the group’s ideas because he is not informed enough about the topics of sexism and racism in art.
In the future, the Guerrilla Girls said they plan to carry on and strengthen their work as activists.
“We are expanding and continuing,” Stein said. “The work of a feminist is never done.”
