Guerilla Girls in Toronto

Was it just me, or did anyone else find the Guerilla Girls lecture/performance at the Metro Convention Centre last Thursday a little uninspiring?

As I write this, I have the vague sense that, as a woman in the arts world, I shouldn’t even dare to say such a thing. I totally value the work they have done, but something about their performance made their work feel really dated and less potent than I once thought it to be. As one of my audience companions said at the end of the night, “I feel like I just sat through a first year women’s studies lecture.”

In particular, their stereotype race and religion barbie dolls really left me with a bad taste in my mouth:

Sure, they were funny, but some part of me couldn’t help but think they were just re-legitimizing these same stereotypes by playing on their humour.

Maybe it was just a problem of not recognizing the kind of audience they had. The lecture felt like an introduction to their work for people who had never heard of them before, rather than for the actual audience who was there: 1,300 women who definitely knew them and their work and I think were looking for a more nuanced and critical discussion about the current state of women artists in the contemporary art world.

They did provide an updated version of their most famous poster with new stats, which are shocking and disappointing.

The original poster and stats

The update

And they mentioned that conditions had originally gotten a bit better after their original performances and that now there has been some “backsliding” but they never specifically addressed why this backsliding has taken place.

And the question period was just sort of embarrassing. It seemed like they’d been taking tips from Democratic leader candidates, side-stepping all the tricky questions and even awkwardly pandering to the audience a few times. Someone even asked the pertinent question of how they feel about the fact that their work has been incorporated into the art historical canon and is now being shown in major museums (the Tate Modern has a room full of their posters) but the stats about women artists’ representation in museums has not changed. And they didn’t have an answer (I mean, it’s fine to not have a specific solution, but I was hoping they’d at least have some thoughts on the implications – it can’t possibly be the first time they’ve been asked about it or thought about it).

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In other news, I cannot kick this nagging winter cold. I’ve been sleeping 8 to 9 hours a night and still wake up feeling tired. It would help if this snow would just end already.