The Guerilla Girls: Can Feminist Art Change a Male-Dominated Market?

The art world has long been shaped by an elite network of collectors, curators, museum boards, and gallerists, who have historically influenced artistic value, market trends, and cultural recognition. In the 1980s, this power structure was particularly rigid, with prestige and financial success often inherited rather than earned through an equitable system. The result was a self-reinforcing cycle that predominantly favoured male artists, leaving women and artists of colour with limited access to major institutions and commercial success. During this period, the art world was largely defined by exclusionary practices, with galleries and museums prioritising a narrow, male dominated, and often Eurocentric vision of artistic greatness.

For nearly four decades, the Guerrilla Girls have worked to expose these inequities, using data-driven critiques and provocative visual interventions to highlight the racial and gender biases that structure the art market. One of their most striking early works, Only 4 Commercial Galleries in NY Show Black Women (1986), revealed the realities of exclusion within the commercial gallery system. Decades later, the figures remain deeply troubling. A 2019 Artnet report revealed that between 2008 and 2019, works by women artists accounted for just 2% of global auction sales - a figure that speaks not to a lack of artistic talent, but to the systemic devaluation of women’s work within the marketplace. Even Georgia O’Keeffe, who up until 2023 was the highest-selling female artist, remains financially eclipsed by male counterparts such as Picasso, Warhol, and Basquiat, whose works continue to achieve record-breaking sums at auction.

The frenzied auction of Maurizio Cattelan’s banana, Comedian, a conceptual work consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall, offers a stark commentary on the art world’s contradictions. The phallic symbolism of the banana, elevated to high art and commodified for profit, feels almost too on-the-nose when contrasted with the persistent devaluation of women’s contributions to the market. While this provocative piece sold for $6.2 million, women artists continue to struggle for financial and institutional recognition - it is a sobering irony: spectacle and irony fetch six figures, while systemic inequities remain unchallenged.

This economic disparity is not incidental; it is the result of institutional inertia and an art market designed to reward those who already hold power. While initiatives aimed at increasing representation have brought greater visibility to marginalised artists, visibility alone does not dismantle the financial and institutional structures that sustain inequality. True equity in the art world requires more than inclusion; it demands a fundamental re-evaluation of how artistic value is assigned and who benefits from market success.

The Guerrilla Girls have continuously adapted their tactics over the decades, responding to shifts in both the art world and broader social movements. In their early years, their activism was deliberately disruptive and grassroots in nature: pasting provocative posters in the dead of night, infiltrating museum openings in gorilla masks, and using satire to expose the exclusionary practices of the art establishment. By remaining anonymous, they ensured this strategy not only protected them from professional repercussions but also reinforced their core message - that the art world’s power structures, not just individual bad actors, were the real problem.

However, as their influence grew, so did their presence within the very institutions they strove to condemn. Today, the Guerrilla Girls’ posters, portfolios, and conceptual works are part of major museum collections, including MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. This shift raises the question of whether an activist collective can maintain its radical edge when its work is embraced - and even commodified - by the elite institutions it originally sought to dismantle? Some critics argue that their absorption into the mainstream risks dulling the impact of their message, reducing their critique to historical artefact rather than a call to action. The Guerrilla Girls, however, reject this notion, instead viewing their institutional recognition as an opportunity to insert subversive critique from within. As they themselves have stated: “What do you do when the art world you’ve spent your whole life attacking suddenly embraces you? Well… you take your critique right inside the joint.”

Their recent exhibition at Hannah Traore Gallery marks yet another evolution in their trajectory - this time, entering the commercial gallery space. Traore, a young gallerist committed to amplifying underrepresented voices, sees the exhibition as a way to introduce the Guerrilla Girls’ activism to a new generation. However, the contemporary art market thrives on exclusivity, spectacle, and profit - values fundamentally at odds with the Guerrilla Girls’ ethos. As their posters and prints become sought-after collector’s items, their critique risks being defanged, transformed from an act of resistance into a desirable commodity. This tension between activism and institutional acceptance is not unique to the Guerrilla Girls; it is a challenge faced by all radical movements as they navigate the fine line between visibility and complicity. The question remains: can the art world be changed from within, or does participation in its structures inevitably dilute the power of critique?

Despite the contradictions inherent in feminist art’s relationship with the commercial market, its potential to catalyse meaningful change should not be underestimated. Art has long served as a tool for activism, not only reflecting societal injustices but also pressuring institutions to acknowledge and rectify them. The Guerrilla Girls, in particular, have been instrumental in exposing the deep-seated biases within the art world, forcing museums, galleries, and collectors to confront their exclusionary practices. Their work has reshaped conversations around representation, compelling institutions to rethink curatorial decisions and acquisition policies. Over the past two decades, there has been a measurable increase in the number of women and BIPOC artists exhibited in major institutions, and the amount of money spent at auction for work by women has grown 174.2% between 2008 and 2021. However, while progress is slowly taking shape, significant limitations remain. The Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2024 shows that artworks by women account for only 39% of gallery sales, whilst work by Black American women comprises just 0.1 percent of all auction sales between 2008 and mid-2022.

Hannah Traore’s decision to exhibit the Guerrilla Girls’ work aligns with a broader movement of independent galleries and museums seeking to challenge these historical imbalances. Spaces like hers provide opportunities for underrepresented artists and activists to engage new audiences and expand their reach beyond traditional institutional gatekeepers. Yet, even these efforts exist within a larger art economy that prioritises financial returns over social change. The challenge, then, is not just to increase visibility but to fundamentally reshape how value is assigned within the art world.