The Guerrilla Girls, the feminist art collective best known for creating works that critique gender discrimination in the art world, is having its first commercial exhibition in New York at Hannah Traore Gallery on the Lower East Side, titled Discrimi-NATION: Guerrilla Girls on Bias, Money, and Art. Although enshrined in art history and exhibited widely in museums throughout the world, the Guerrilla Girls have only had three commercial exhibitions since forming four decades ago.
“Our work is not the type of thing that a gallery will make money on, since our posters sell for like $30 or $40 and that’s not going to make a gallery survive,” a Guerrilla Girls founding member, who uses the pseudonym Käthe Kollwitz, tells The Art Newspaper. “We haven’t resisted showing with commercial galleries. They were just not interested in us. We attack them. And it’s true that we haven’t really sought it out.”
Guerrilla Girls, Guerrilla Girls’ Definition of a Hypocrite, 1990 Courtesy of the artist and Hannah Traore Gallery
The Guerrilla Girls was formed in New York in 1985 by seven women artists in response to the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) 1984 exhibition An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, which included just 13 women among its 165 participating artists. The collective began creating posters, billboards and public actions that sought to expose gender and racial imbalances in art, often “passing the hat around” to cover the cost of printing and materials, Kollwitz says.
As the collective rose to prominence and expanded, its work began entering museum collections. Ninety-nine international museums hold works by the Guerrilla Girls, including the MoMA, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the Museo de Arte de São Paulo and others.
Guerrilla Girls, Dear Mr. Krens, 1992 Courtesy of the artist and Hannah Traore Gallery.
“We have over 20 museum shows a year all over the world—sometimes even 30,” Kollwitz says. “And most museums in the world—just not in the US—do pay artist fees for a work being in museums, so we generate funds that way and sell portfolios of our work to museums.”She adds: “The market is still the domain of famous male artists who still get more money than equally famous women artists. But things have changed a lot since we started. When we started, there were no women and people of colour in galleries.”
Hannah Traore approached the collective when she was “reinvigorated” by its work after watching the Art21 documentary Bodies of Knowledge (2023). “I hadn’t thought about them for a while and wondered if they would answer an email,” she says. “I think they were surprised that I was so excited to show them. What’s so powerful about the Guerrilla Girls is that, because they are anonymous, they can be truthful, and that’s one of the best ways to enact change. Since their time, things have changed in the market for women but at a snail’s pace.”
Guerrilla Girls, Only 4 Commercial Galleries in NY Show Black Women, 1986Courtesy of the artist and Hannah Traore Gallery
Most of the works in the exhibition, however, are not for sale. Traore is offering two groups of prints—a larger portfolio-sized group priced at $38,000 and a print-sized group offered for $3,000, in addition to merchandise starting at $20.
“The money was never what was in it for me, and was never really even part of the conversation,” Traore says. “I didn’t think I would be selling anything at all. For me, it was the honour of working with the Guerrilla Girls and bringing the Guerrilla Girls back to New York and introducing them to my younger audiences who would be inspired by their work.”
Guerrilla Girls, Hold Onto Your Wallets! Cross Your Legs!, 1992 Courtesy of the artist and Hannah Traore Gallery
She adds: “I think it’s beautiful they agreed to work with a young gallerist. It shows their commitment to the long-term work and to bringing the next generation into the work.”
Traore was particularly interested in including works about the Black experience like Only 4 Commercial Galleries in NY Show Black Women (1984). “It’s one of our earliest and most important posters, and that’s primarily how [Traore] came to want to do the show,” Kollwitz says. “Then we had conversations to figure out what else to include, sticking to the topic of discrimination.”
Guerrilla Girls, When Racism and Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, How Much Will Your Art Collection Be Worth?, 1989 Courtesy of the artist and Hannah Traore Gallery
Kollwitz adds that several early pieces “go after the galleries because we were in a dire situation at the time”. The collective “felt that what we were doing really made a lot of people mad, but it was also a breath of fresh air for all the incredible artists we knew who were discriminated against”.
The career-spanning exhibition brings together some “old classics and new work that shows where we are now”, Kollwitz says. “We have tried to really think about things in ways that some people will find unforgettable and maybe change their minds about what they thought art—or the best art—is.”
Guerrilla Girls: Discrimi-NATION: Guerrilla Girls on Bias, Money, and Art, Hannah Traore Gallery, New York, 17 January-29 March
