Guerrilla Girls Invade Montserrat College of Art (And you’re invited)

At Artists For Humanity, we understand the concept of using art as a vehicle for social-change well. Our program was founded twenty years ago based on Executive/Artistic Director Susan Rodgerson’s belief that art could change lives—that providing creative teens with creative jobs could not only change the lives of the young artists employed, but also affect the community at large. She knew that the creation of art could act like a ripple in a pond, encouraging people to communicate, create, and, ultimately, break down social, cultural, economic, and racial barriers that keep people separated from one another. 

The Guerrilla Girls' Boston Mobile Billboard Project, parked outside of the MFA.

And Susan’s belief still rings true: twenty years after employing just 6 teens to work in her studio, AFH now employs over 200 Boston teens annually with jobs in the arts, including painting, graphic design, web design, 3D design, photography, videography, and screen printing. 

AFH appreciates pushing the envelope through art and applauds Montserrat College of Art’s daring exhibition, Not Ready to Make Nice, Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond. The exhibit, which is being shown exclusively at Montserrat College of Art, is a collection of posters, publications, and the visual arts created by the Guerrilla Girls, a group of anonymous artists who have been championing feminism and social change while challenging preconceived social norms and damaging stereotypes for the past decade.

The Guerrilla Girls are known as much for their brazen cultural questions and hard-to-swallow billboard facts, as much as they are for their gigantic, gorilla head masks. This exhibit showcases the many campaigns that the Guerrilla Girls have undertaken, and the breadth of their revolutionary expressions.

Montserrat's Gallery Director and Curator, Leonie Bradbury, posing in the Montserrat Gallery. Photo by: Wendy Maeda, Boston Globe staff.

Montserrat invites you to join them in a two-day symposium this weekend! The riotous event kicks off on Friday, October 26^th at 8pm with what promises to be an intense, and inspiring, discussion led by some of the masked artists themselves! Seriously—artists in Gorilla masks aren’t your average lecturers! 

Both the exhibition, discussion, and the two-day academic symposium will offer insight into how art can be used to visually bring topics such as social activism, politics, war, cultural conscience, environmental embodiment and even the Occupy Movement to the forefront of discussion.

To buy your tickets for this possibly once-in-a-lifetime event, visit the Symposium Registration here.  And be sure to look out for AFH alums who are currently Montserrat students: Jameel Radcliff and Massiel Grullon! (For Montserrat students, this exhibit is FREE!)

We hope that you can join us and our friends at Montserrat for this revolutionary Symposium! For information on directions, programs, and upcoming exhibits at Montserrat College of Art, click here.

For more information on the gorilla-masked gutsy ladies behind the Guerrilla Girls, check out www.guerrillagirls.com.

And as always, stay tuned here and on our facebook for more info on upcoming local shows, exhibits, and artistic activism for social change!