For over 40 years, the Guerrilla Girls have been shaking up the art world’s conscience. With biting humor and provocative slogans delivered through visually striking poster campaigns, they expose inequalities of gender and race in the international art world and beyond. In particular, the Guerrilla Girls target institutional structures dominated by a white, male, and heteronormative status quo. The anonymity of the Guerrilla Girls is a radical act in an art world driven by ego and fame: members always appear in gorilla masks, going by the names of deceased women artists such as Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz rather than their own. In preserving their anonymity, they shift attention away from the individual artists behind the masks and toward the artistic message itself – conveyed clearly, sharply, and without compromise. The collective also resists commodification by the art market, placing its work directly in public space as billboards, posters, and stickers.

The Guerrilla Girls’ critique of the discrimination and objectification of women is never generic – it always responds to the specific place where the group is active. The new work, created especially for the n.b.k. facade, is written in German, addressing not only followers of the international art scene but every passerby on Chausseestrasse. The female nudes reproduced in the work are drawn from Berlin institutions and may well be familiar to viewers. In addressing viewers directly, the Guerrilla Girls call attention to the imbalance between women artists and female nudes in local collections – and, in doing so, foster an awareness of the culture that continues to shape this inequality today.

Since forming in 1985 in New York, the Guerrilla Girls’ actions have been presented in numerous international exhibitions, including at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2025); Tate Modern, London (2023); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018); São Paulo Museum of Art; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (both 2017); Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009); Istanbul Modern (2007); and the Venice Biennale (2005).