by Mircy Coca Soriano
Guerrilla Girls: Making Trouble is a striking exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the anonymous feminist collective Guerrilla Girls. Featuring more than 30 powerful prints and objects created between 1985 and 2007, the show documents the group’s relentless critique of systemic sexism and racism in the art world.
The Guerrilla Girls first emerged in 1985 in response to the Museum of Modern Art’s An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, which included only 13 women out of 169 artists. Outraged, the group began wheat-pasting posters around Lower Manhattan, calling out the exclusion of women and BIPOC artists from major institutions.
Walking into this exhibition feels like stepping into a decades-long protest: loud, unapologetic, and urgent. It’s not just a display of art — it’s a wake-up call. Bright posters with bold, confrontational messages peel back the glossy façade of the art world, asking hard questions: Who’s shown? Who’s paid? Who’s missing?
What truly captivated me were the posters showing women's bodies with gorilla masks covering their faces — a literal and symbolic mask that both protects their identities and confronts the viewer with the absurdity of exclusion.
As I walked through the exhibit, I found myself reflecting on the labor movement. Though the Guerrilla Girls aren’t a union, their work speaks directly to labor issues: low wages, lack of representation, and systemic inequality in the cultural sector. Their sharp graphics, biting humor, and hard-hitting statistics expose the exploitation of creative labor by elite institutions and wealthy patrons.
Through their art and activism, they give voice to the silenced and demand not only gender and racial justice, but also dignity and fairness for all who work in creative fields — a fight deeply connected to labor’s own.
LHF intern Mircy Coca Soriano is a junior at Union College in Schenectady, NY. Guerrilla Girls: Making Trouble is on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts through September 28.