Thursday, January 21, 2016

Do We Still Need Guerilla Girls?



Yoko Ono is flanked by the masked activists known as Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz. (guerrillagirls.com)


One of the most difficult issues for me to overcome as an artist is to manage the marketing aspect of my art, ensuring my work as an artist, and in particular, as a woman, is not devalued.

There are loads of folks out there who perhaps don't understand the creative artistic professions, and need to be informed and re-educated otherwise. They assume what you do is either a hobby, or they don't consider being an artist as a viable and vital profession, for one reason or another. This particular issue has been paramount on my mind lately, as I push to eek out an income for myself, while slaying the devaluing art dragons. An artist needs to be there own advocate and to be an activist.

Speaking of activists, yesterday a friend, and one of my past professors posted a you tube video about the feminist activists, the Guerrilla Girls, who were guests on Late Night with Steven Cobert. Wow, I thought initially, times are changing! But that's just the media hype, and we are easily fooled and drawn into believing that things are either better or worse than what matches reality. Things have changed, but very slowly.

Then today, the Guerrilla Girls were interviewed this morning on CBC Radio. I didn't get a chance to see them interviewed on Steven Cobert until now, but did hear them on the radio. They really clarified how things haven't changed so much, and I was brought back down to reality, and how the history of art is very much a history of power and  yes, we still need Guerrilla Girls, perhaps more now than ever.



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