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fierce pussy, VOTE!, 2018.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS
The collective fierce pussy has released a new poster ahead of the upcoming midterm elections encouraging people to vote. The poster is available in two sizes (11 by 8½ inches and 11 by 17 inches) as a free download on the group’s website.
The poster features a black-and-white photograph of a woman being restrained by either arm by two police officers. Above the image, it reads, “1906 this woman was arrested for wanting the right to vote.”; below, “2018 do not take democracy for granted VOTE!” This marks the first time fierce pussy is aiming to actively disseminate one of its posters via social media, though they are also encouraging people to print it out and place it everywhere and anywhere.
“It’s a call to action,” fierce pussy, whose members prefer to be quoted as a collective, told ARTnews by phone. “There’s a lot of gerrymandering and voter suppression, and we have to turn the tide with a massive turnout of voting. Everyone’s talking about voting and this is an image to go with it. Images are so powerful, and we’re excited that this can be an image that people put forward and hang on their doors and in their windows and put in stacks in their student or lunchrooms.”
The collective, whose current members are Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, and Carrie Yamaoka, had previously used the image (which they can’t precisely recall how they found) in a similar poster back in 1993, as a call to action against a constitutional amendment, known as Amendment 2, that had passed in Colorado that barred gay and lesbian individuals from being recognized as a legally protected class. In that rendition, the text below the photograph reads, “1993 how many women will lose their jobs, homes, or kids for being lesbian?” (The amendment was subsequently ruled unconstitutional in the landmark 1996 Supreme Court case Romer v. Evans.)
Best known for posters that call into question stereotypes and preconceived notions of queer people, particularly lesbians, through word and text, which were wheat-pasted throughout New York City during the 1990s, fierce pussy currently has a yearlong commission, titled “AND SO ARE YOU,” that wraps around the windows of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. That work combines updates to the group’s text-based “List Posters” and text-and-image “Family Pictures and Found Photos” series.
The collective asked that the following letter accompany this article:
dear comrades, friends and allies,
fierce pussy has a new poster,
timed for the upcoming election, now only weeks away.
we made it in the hopes that it will help spur people to get out and VOTE!
we are asking everyone we know, especially those of you who teach or are affiliated with organizations that work with young people, to disseminate the poster, by any means necessary.
please print out many copies, share with students, enlist people to wheatpaste, staple, or tape up and share everywhere.
and/or blow it up as large as you can.
People can find the files on the home page of our website—fiercepussy.org.
please share widely.
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