A series of nine posters decrying sexism and xenophobia
Inspired by the feminist-activist art collective The Guerrilla Girls and especially their work The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, this ongoing project aims to draw attention to a number of deep-rooted structural inequities within our society and institutions, voicing discomfort and dismantling biased behaviour.
Adopting their sarcastic language and eye-catching design, the posters aim to make people listen, read and engage. By emphasising the intersections of the issues at hand, this project suggests that no social rights movement is more important than the other, but that they are all very much intertwined and equally relevant.
In the spirit of The Guerrilla Girls, this project furthermore takes on institutions that adorn themselves with progressive behaviour, while at the same time old power structures and inequalities prevail within.
Catherine Somzé: The Advantages Of: by the newly founded feminist-activist art collective that goes by the same name
is a series of nine posters decrying sexism and xenophobia. The work was created as a part of their third year Critical Studies project in homage to The Guerrilla Girls. Among other issues it illustrates the following quote about the gendered dimension of work perfectly: "Organisational management practices teach workers to suppress sexuality, reproduction, and emotionality, which are all culturally associated with femininity. In short, shared understandings of an “ideal worker” more closely resemble shared ideas about masculinity than femininity (...). This disadvantages women workers: employers and managers more easily value and reward men because they more closely resemble employers’ implicit understandings of how good workers behave"(Gender and the Artist Stereotype: Understanding Gender Inequality in Artistic Careers by Diana L. Miller).
The two third-year students behind The Advantages Of: choose to remain anonymous and not to disclose their majors.
