Bulgarian Fund for Women, in partnership with the National Gallery, is pleased to present the first-ever exhibition of the renowned artist collective Guerrilla Girls in Bulgaria. Titled The Art of Behaving Badly, the retrospective features the group’s most significant works, including the legendary poster “Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Metropolitan Museum?”—a piece that made waves in 1989 by highlighting that while less than 5% of artists in modern art museums were women, 85% of the nude figures depicted were female.
The Guerrilla Girls exhibition will open on 6 March 2025 at the National Gallery / Kvadrat 500 and is part of BFW’s multi-year Fund for Art Projects by Women Artists.
Over the next three months, visitors will have the opportunity to experience iconic posters, videos, and installations from the permanent collections of the world’s most renowned museums, including MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Centre Georges Pompidou. The exhibition will also showcase an entirely new body of work, inspired by the Bulgarian context. Tracing the 40-year history of Guerrilla Girls, the exhibition will explore their evolution from their founding in 1980s New York to their present-day interventions, lectures, and performances that critique inequality in art, culture, and society. Bulgarian audiences will have a unique opportunity to engage with their bold and innovative approach—blending art, humor, and social critique.
On 7 March 2025, the day after the official opening, two of the group’s founding members—known by their pseudonyms Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz—will deliver a live public performative lecture at the National Galery / Kvadrat 500. This genre, developed and embraced by the Guerrilla Girls, will symbolically connect Sofia’s art scene with the cultural hubs of New York, London, Paris, and Vienna.
Visitors are encouraged to actively participate, share their thoughts, and even “behave badly” by donning the collective’s iconic gorilla masks—a playful yet powerful way to challenge the dominant norms of the art world and advocate for equal access to artistic spaces.
The Art of Behaving Badly will run from 6 March to 8 June 2025 at the National Gallery / Kvadrat 500 and is organized by the Bulgarian Fund for Women.
Media partner: BTA / Bulgarian Telegraph Agency
ABOUT GUERRILLA GIRLS
The anonymous artists’ group was founded in New York in 1985, following an action that criticized the policies of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The group drew attention to gender and racial inequality in the artistic community and society at large. Through posters, books, billboards, lectures, interviews, public appearances, and digital interventions, the Guerrilla Girls expose inequalities, discrimination, corruption, and conflicts of interest in artistic institutions.
The Guerrilla Girls often use humor to make their serious messages more accessible and impactful. The artists are known for their “guerrilla” tactics, such as putting up posters or organizing unexpected exhibitions that provoke dialogue and draw attention to social issues.
The anonymity of the Guerrilla Girls members is key to their identity. They wear gorilla masks to symbolize their struggle; to ensure individuality in their public appearances, members use pseudonyms inspired by the names of famous female artists, writers, and activists, such as Frida Kahlo, Käthe Kollwitz, and Gertrude Stein.
Over the years, the Guerrilla Girls have become some of the most influential artist-activists globally, and their work continues to raise questions about equality, justice, and transparency in art and culture.
About Fund for Art Projects by Women Artists
In 2017, BFW created the first-ever “Fund for Art Projects by Women Artists” to bring the conversation about women’s representation in the art world and their unequal access to financial resources to the forefront. The project launched with a national survey that showed that only 9% of the National Gallery’s permanent exhibition and 17% of solo exhibitions between 1990 and 2017 were by women. The situation is identical in most of the municipal galleries that responded to the inquiry.
About the National Gallery / Kvadrat 500
Kvadrat 500 is the National Gallery’s newest and largest building, opened on 25 May 2015. In 28 rooms on four levels, 1,700 works of Bulgarian and foreign artists are exhibited from the rich collection, which counts more than 42,000 museum pieces. The Bulgarian collection began in the 1890s, and most of the foreign collection was formed in the 1980s. The exhibition includes works representing Bulgarian art from the mid-19th century to the present day, European art from the 15th to the 20th centuries, and examples from Asia, Africa, and America.
