Girl Power Now: Guerrilla Girls in Fargo

By Jacinta Zens

The Guerrilla Girls, an internationally renowned anonymous feminist art collective, have been bringing attention to the gender and racial imbalances in contemporary art institutions for the last 40 years. They have worked with the most prestigious museums throughout the world, including the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; the Museum of Military History in Dresden, Germany; the Minneapolis Institute of Art; The Centre Pompidou in Paris; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in New Zealand; the National Museum of World Writing Systems in Incheon, South Korea; and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

And now they will be in Fargo for the first time for events on January 22 and 23 at the Plains Art Museum in conjunction with the "Women Artists: Four Centuries of Creativity" exhibit. We spoke with Guerrilla Girl Kathe Kollwitz (members use the names of female artists as aliases) about the collective, the events at the Plains Art Museum and the future of the Guerrilla Girls.

HPR: You started by protesting museums and then you wound up working within museums.

Kathe Kollwitz: That didn't happen for quite a while. Museums were just really pissed off at first. Now they want us to change them. They want us to be there criticizing, because there are people inside museums trying to make positive changes happen.

HPR: When that started happening to you, did you feel you could go in and help organizations while still staying true to your mission? I think it'd be such a shocking situation.

KK: When museums first came calling, we had discussions about it. We came out of the discussions realizing that we would get access to a huge audience to get our message out.

And now we criticize these institutions right on their own walls, which is what we've done in countless museums all over the world. So it turned out to be a great thing for us. But we were very suspicious at first, because yes, they were using us because people want to see what we did.

Today it's a little different. You know, we're 40 years old now.

HPR: I was going to congratulate you at some point. That's amazing!

KK: It's a labor of love. I can only tell you that we love doing this work. We're always trying to do it differently, do it better, connect with people better.

And we love the whole part of it where we go around the world and meet all these great people. We meet curators, artists and people on the street.

We just went to the International Women's Day in Bulgaria last March. We did a huge museum exhibition there and marched with all these people with a special project that we did about Bulgaria itself. It's incredible. We meet the greatest people everywhere.

Everyone is trying to push that rock up the hill, both our audience and the people working inside institutions. And it's not easy, you know. We have made inroads, but it would be great if we made many more.

HPR: What keeps you motivated?

KK: Well, first of all, today, you can't give up. You can be depressed, but you can't be unmotivated. We're in such a horrible time in this country. We certainly would never want to stop now.

I think we figured out a way to create political art that people can really respond to. And that, hopefully, makes them think up their own ways of fighting for change.

HPR: That leads me to the workshop that you're hosting at the Plains Art Museum.

KK: There's a talk and a workshop. We're giving a talk in which we'll show a lot of our work, discuss our strategies and what we do and then people can ask questions. We always hear from really interesting people.

For the workshop, we have developed a way to teach how to make political art. We ask everyone to pick an issue that they want to do something about. It can be any issue they care about.

And in a couple of hours, we will help them use some of our techniques to create something. There's not enough time in the workshop to finish their work, but after, they'll do that. We work with people all over the world, doing all kinds of actions, posters, etc.

HPR: Do you find it necessary to use humor when talking about the topics in your work?

KK: Things are pretty dark today, but if you can make somebody who disagrees with you laugh, you have a better chance at trying to convert them. That's one part of it. And the other part of it is, sometimes making fun of horrible things that are happening works.It definitely helps me personally. It often helps to get an idea across.

We try to say something that people didn't know before, that maybe will change their minds about an issue. And for people who already are doing activist work, we want to help them feel that we're all in this fight together. Our fight will never be over. We are not giving up. And there are so many people out there like us who are not giving up in this dire time.

HPR: And thank every single one of you for not giving up.

KK: Well, thank you for that. Things are very difficult, but we have to keep trying.

HPR: It's so difficult right now. But the thought of people working together brings me joy.

KK: And there are so many people working together! Look at everything happening across the country and in many places around the world. What else can we do? That's what we've all done our whole lives.

HPR: I think it is such a powerful part of what you do. You bring people together who are trying to push the rock up the hill on their own. For the audience to be reminded that you're not on your own and to connect with and see people who are doing the same is very powerful. Trying to make positive changes can be quite isolating.

KK: It can be isolating. I hope we bring together like-minded people to make changes. That is one of the things that we care about.

HPR: It has been 40 years since you've been working in this way. Are you planning on bringing more people in? Are the Guerrilla Girls going to go on forever? Or is this a finite thing?

KK: I don't think we have an answer to that yet, but it's something that we think about. And you should know that over 60 people have been members of the Guerrilla Girls over the 40 years.

HPR: That's amazing.

KK: Our secret is we've always been fairly small at any one time, because you really can't have a big group and get things done. We decided to be anonymous in the beginning, and we've stuck with that for all these 40 years. We've had very diverse members. We've had very well-known artist members and many artists whom you wouldn’t recognize.

HPR: It's brilliant that you have the masks. It allows you anonymity so people aren't targeting you, and the ability to bring people into the group whenever you want.

KK: Yeah, it's been a great thing for us because the secret of who we might be is kind of delicious. Another thing I think was great is that it depersonalizes us. It brings attention back to the message, not the person.

The Guerrilla Girls will be at the Plains Art Museum on January 22, 2026, at 6:30 p.m.,to deliver their classic presentation with a Fargo twist. Their art activism workshop is on January 23 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tickets can be purchased on the Plains Art Museum's website, plainsart.org.

Reach the author at jacinta.zens@gmail.com.