It came in an instant, engulfed me in my infant state. Baffled and vulnerable, I could not but be lost- be a wanderer. Living aimlessly, dragging and poking around my vicinity. It came like a stranger, poised to seize my safety. I could not but be panicky and anxious throughout my predicament. It came and left me void- emotionless, I was. Uninhabited and lost. It came.

I am seven the first time my mom sleeps on the couch. I remember being little and being afraid, so so afraid. I remember my Dad's big warm hands on my shoulders, guiding me down the hallway, I remember dirty rough carpet underneath my feet, and I remember our dimly lit hallway, my mom lying in her makeshift bed. She was smiling then, but all I saw was her face an hour before, twisted in anger, screaming into the air until she felt empty. Give your mother a kiss goodnight, my dad said (I didn’t want to, of course I didn’t want to). Kiss her goodnight, he urged, so I did. She’d laughed as I’d approached. God, look at you, you’re shaking like a leaf, she’d said. It’s like you’re scared of me or something. For the next decade I hear her ill-timed laughter, watch a thousand iterations of the same scene. Once or twice a week, something minor and then a bomb; she shoots arsenic words blindly, not caring who she hits. The bigger I get, the easier a target I am. I eventually learn how to avoid her- did you know you can stay at Spence until 8:30 if you’re quiet? She eventually learns how to catch me- somehow my tutor can only meet right after school in our house. We evolve together, predator and prey. “It’s not my fault, you know. Your sister and I have a good relationship, because she talks to me. You never talk to me.” My shaking hands become just a little more erratic, making my room temperature coffee shudder in its mug. She hates that I don’t respond, everyone does, you think I don’t know that? But if my mouth opened, more than what she wants would come out. She doesn’t know, can’t know maybe, how little I have to say that she wants to hear. “Case in point. You can blame me all you want, but the proof is in the pudding.” Or maybe she does know, knows if she teaches me silence then she can call herself innocent. Maybe she’s been playing long ball, making moves right under my nose. From the corner of my eye her hands shake too. We keep playing our game, ravenous for the end. I tell her she sometimes makes it hard for me to want to be alive. She tells me the same thing back, and somehow that’s where the line lies, because for the first time other people get involved. I continue to run, to hide, but it starts to become easier. I don’t realize why until summer, when it's “over”, when I stop hiding. When I approach her she runs, she hides. She only talks to me reluctantly, with nervous hands. One day, I think it, and it makes my stomach hurt. I think God, look at her, she’s shaking like a leaf. It’s like she’s scared of me or something.

instagram.com/clarissa.ssa.art

They watched the sun drip past the horizon as they hauled the old tobogan into the back of the truck, mittens fumbling to get a good grip. Once secured, Anna hurriedly moved to enter the truck, but was pulled back, leaving thick muddy lines in the thin layer of snow covering the ground. North twisted her around and kissed her quickly, before she pulled away from him. “No, c’mon, let’s go. I don’t want them to feel more like the third wheel than they already do.” Her eyes flickered to the short black hair in the driver's seat. North tried not to roll his eyes. “But you look so beautiful with the snow in your hair…” He tried to pout like she did. She laughed, tugging him towards the car by the sleeve of his flannel jacket. He relented, but not before adding that “it’s not like he has anything better to do”. “They,” she whispered. “Whatever.” She climbed into the passenger seat, fidgeting with the radio buttons as her sibling pulled out of the driveway. She smiled when she noticed they’d taken off their sweatshirt. “Getting used to the new haircut?” she asked. Casper shrugged. “I got too hot. I wanted to keep the car warm for when you guys got in, but you took longer than I expected.” Their voice lacked judgment but North's displeasure from the back seat was practically tangible. Always making himself the victim. God, you know I don’t like him, why did you invite him along? “Them.” she responded in her head. “And they’re my sibling, it’s important to me that you guys get along, bond, I don’t know. Please?” “What’s with the face?” Casper asked jokingly, pulling her from the depths of her imagination. It took Anna a second to realize she’d been making her pouty face in reality as well as in her head. They made eye contact with her through the rear view mirror, one eyebrow raised, the closest to a smirk they ever got. She just blushed in reply. They pulled up to the spot where their corner of Illinois warped from flat land to hillside as the very last ray of light striped the sky before completely giving way to the stars. Casper checked on the tire chains before helping North move the tobogan from the back. Then Casper quickly climbed back into the car, only to have Anna knock on the window. “You’re not joining us?” A suppressed frown pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Not this year, I think. It’s a high school tradition, A, and I’m all done with that these days. Besides, I’m sure you two will have more fun going alone.” They could tell she wanted to argue back, but North put his hand on her shoulder, silently pulling her away, and she finally moved from the car and into the thick fog-like snow. Through the snow dusted windshield, Casper watched as they disappeared into the dark, dragging the toboggan behind them.

The weather transformed adagio, and long days of blue skies tumbled into winter winds brought about by a change in the seasons. Up the banks of the rock and shell ridden shore they washed in like the tides. Hot blood coursed through my veins, harrowing the frigid air that nipped at my fingertips and the crest of my ears, turning my skin red and raw. The boy carried an earnest look. He cleared his throat and straightened the collar of a lumpy, black quarter zip jacket in an unnecessarily formal fashion. I watched in amusement as he trooped across the dampened sand, causing a small avenanch with each step. His hands were laced rigidly behind his back and he furiously chewed at his lip. Surveying the beach’s inhabitants with an intent gaze, he conjured a supernatural flexibility to bend forward nearly enough for his nose to graze the ground. Any potential candidates that confronted him were aggressively seized and drawn to eye for further scrutiny. The gulls knew well not to disrupt his sport, flocking to the sky in a chaotic blur of feathers as he drew near. I found the seriousness in which he took rock collecting quite entertaining, but I feared the grin I desperately fought to compress might be received as mockery of the meticulous craft. Despite my best efforts, my face became bizarrely contorted as I choked down giggles. A few escaped, erupting from my nostrils and manifesting as peculiar burps. These, to my surprise, he remarkably neglected to notice, occupied by conducting a detailed analysis of a skipping stone candidate. Once I had recovered my self control, I figured my efforts better be directed towards helping his venture, and cloaked personal sentiments with an expression of extreme concentration. Scouting our surroundings, my eye caught a slender, black target. With minimal knowledge regarding the topic, I was drastically under qualified for making judgment. However, the specimen showed promise enough to pursue. Misfortunately, it was surrounded by sopping moss and a suspicious, foul smelling secretion. I edged my hesitation, grimacing with distaste as I poked at it with the tip of my shoe. I squatted down to the greatest degree my legs and stomach would allow and pinched the slate between two fingers. Holding it far from my body and as I approached him, my nose crumpled in protest. “Is this one good?” I asked. He squinted, first at my expression of optimistic accomplishment and then at my retrieval. “Too small,” he frowned, snatching it from my hand and tossing it unapologetically among the rubble. I furrowed my brow and trudged away, admittedly deflated. It took several attempts before I began to become acquainted with what was desirable. There were a legion of demands sought to follow; not too heavy, not too light, even edged, flat… The rocks who adhered were excused from a fate of immediate discarding by the collector as my proposal had been. Rather, they remained masked by warm hands that cradled from the bitter cold. The crowded assemblage of detained hard bodies, nearly bursting between his fingers with all their irregularities, had mercifully been favored and deemed worthy of use. Their smooth faces wouldn’t be recalled, the memory shaken from his skull by a nonchalant toss of rolling black locks and a twist of the hips as they were flung across the water. But maybe the number of skips they made- if it was a respectable one, that is- would be bragged about over the dinner table. That, in time, would be forgotten too.

instagram.com/_art1326

instagram.com/_art1326

instagram.com/expressioninearth

instagram.com/expressioninearth

I can picture it now: our family sitting around the kitchen table, our parents across from their nine year old twinset. My sister, Alexandra, had asked what the “Holocaust” was after hearing the word at school, and our parents decided it was time for “the talk,” a ritual of many American Jewish households. ​Desperate to prove to them that we are ready for a grown up conversation, we do our best to sit still and practice proper posture. For 45 minutes, our parents reveal to us one of the most evil events in human history: the Holocaust. Our dad speaks first, alternating eye contact between Alexandra and me. His words rest like shrapnel in my heart. My first instinct is to run from the images behind them. I seek comfort by forcing myself to generate soothing thoughts. “This didn’t happen to anyone I know,” I tell myself. “It was so long ago.” It doesn’t take much time before this imaginary shield is punctured, and I am forced to acknowledge the reality of their agonizing words. This happened to my own relatives. This happened not lifetimes ago, but just eight years before Dad was born. This feels like a nightmare, yet I am astutely aware it is real. My heart pounds out of my chest. I am desperate for an escape. I want my parents to take it all back, to say they got it wrong. I just want this story to end, to be relieved of this onslaught of torturous information. My life has unfolded in countless ways through the power of my Jewish identity. As far back as I can remember, my family has instilled in me a love of our traditions and heritage through dinner conversations and bedtime talks. Those conversations were far ranging: sometimes they involved the meaning of words and melodies of ancient prayers; other times, they centered on lessons to be gleaned from Torah stories. We spoke about Israel, its founding, its accomplishments, and the struggles of its messy, complex existence. We discussed themes of morality and social obligation and how they color our traditions. The essence of these discussions has remained with me, but the sting of that first Holocaust revelation stands out because it represents my first loss of innocence. The admission by my parents that our world is broken and they alone cannot fix it was shattering. The beautiful imagery and heroes through which I had viewed my identity—Moses, David and Golda Meir, flowers blossoming in the desert, the sweet taste of apples and honey on New Year’s—would be forever mingled with visions of crematoria and gas chambers that I could not eradicate. My view of the world would never be the same. In my search to grasp the Holocaust, I have met with survivors—people who went on to build lives and families, who found optimism and purpose after losing everything. I despair that despite the lessons humanity could have learned, cruelty in the world seems to be a constant. The survivors are a small antidote to the sense of helplessness and loss that comes with my struggle to comprehend. My response to them can only be a vow to remember and a promise to retell their stories in a world that quickly forgets, along with a commitment to fight against hatred in all forms. That night at the kitchen table will forever affirm my identity as a Jew and my place in the world. It is my Jewish identity that has inspired my engagement in organizations that seek to fight anti-Semitism, intolerance, and ism’s of every kind. Long before conversations about privilege, I was aware of how easily I could have been born in Berlin and not Bryn Mawr. I understand that as a Jew, my responsibility extends to all; and that when any group is unsafe, we are all unsafe.

December 17, 2021 During the 1980s in the New York City art world emerged a radical feminist group called the Guerilla Girls who directly attacked the art institutions for their sexist exclusion of women. Taking the city by storm, the Guerrilla Girls were determined to shake up the status quo in pursuit of a more equal and diverse art industry. The anonymous group, made up of exclusively female artists, were inspired by the women’s rights movement and the second wave of feminism to attack the prejudices within the white male dominated art world. The Guerilla Girls considered themselves “the conscience of the art world” and based their entire image and subsequent game plan on the meaning of being a woman. Misogyny, laws that prohibited equality, and little to no substantial cultural changes in equity throughout the years, made it surprising that there are even female artists at all. Nevertheless, despite stereotypes, discrimination, and the heiarchy of even the materials used in art, women artists continued to create and inspire but were under-represented in the museums and galleries in New York City. Many participants in the New York City art scene in the early 1980s had asked, "why haven't there been more great women artists throughout Western history?” However, the Guerrilla Girls attacked the question from the other direction, asking, "why haven't more women been considered great artists throughout Western history?" Thus, the Guerrilla Girls took on the mission to affect change in the art world, but to do so they had to force it to acknowledge and destroy the boundaries excluding women. By using their cutting edge strategies like humor, pop culture, and shock value, the Guerrilla Girls leveraged their popularity to ultimately gain mass support and put pressure on the art institutions for change. To capture the attention of New York City and to present a unified message, the Guerrilla Girls used their name and bodies as their first line of attack. The choice of the group name Guerrilla Girls originally stemmed from the term guerrilla warfare: quick paced and little actions against enemy forces, which the girls adopted as their own. Their “girly,” sexy, and outrageous outfits paired with the unexpected gorilla mask visibly and immediately spread the message that “immature girls,” so called, can reclaim their identity and be considered powerful. As for the masks, the girls believed it gave them some “mask-ulinity,” a play on words that gave the group teeth to express urgency and rage through humorous tactics. One Guerrilla Girl stated, “we also wanted to make feminism [that “F” word] fashionable again, with new tactics and strategies. It was really surprising when so many people identified with us and felt we spoke for their collective anger.” This fresh new image of fashionable feminism quickly became appealing to the public eye and hard to miss. During the late 1970s, the feminst movement had begun to be less effective and outdated, relying on protests by the means of formal talks and letter writings. The girls, however, knew that a different approach was needed to capture the attention of the city, hence the shock value and sex appeal of their debut. Finally, the girls used the tactic of mystery as an anonymous group and by taking the code names of famous dead female artists, such as Frida Khalo and Grace Gleuk. Their anonymity was unique to the feminist movement, since the norm before was to rely on famous names such as Rosa Parks, Betty Friedan, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Guerrilla Girls were opposed to being behind a single individual; a face, an icon, a hero, insitining rather that the attention be focused on the group as a whole while equalizing them behind a common cause. With their eccentric looks and their head-strong boldness, the city immediately took notice with letters flooding in from supporters. Capitalizing on their instant popularity, the Guerrilla Girl’s next most effective attention-grabbing technique was the paired use of humor and pop culture in messaging, specifically in their posters. The posters’ direct messages about museums and galleries under-representation of gender, and eventually race, combined with the girls’ singular brand of humor, made sensitive and upsetting topics more bearable, all the while keeping the girls in their art roots. During an interview for Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls, the girls explained, "if you can laugh about something, that is the most brilliant [ploy] because a laugh makes everybody feel a part of the inside joke." In the beginning of the poster campaign, the posters were strictly a combination of text and photos that were intended to be conceptual and only based on art biases against women. However, as the movement progressed, the posters started to evolve. The Guerrilla Girls began to use statistics, which focused on practical and material evidence of the differences between the representation of white male artists versus that of women and people of color. One of their most influential posters was a message about the economic inequality suffered by female artists. It was an illustration of a dollar bill with a dotted line running vertically down a third of the dollar, and at the bottom in bold letters it read, “Women in America earn only 2/3 of what men do. Women artists earn only 1/3 of what men artists do.” Using the pop culture image of the dollar bill, the girls piggybacked on the previous feminist movements exposures of the unenforced Equal Pay Act in order to make the connected an even more dramatic point about economic disparities for women in the art world. Another poster was a picture of a piece of bread with words that read, “We sell white bread. Ingredients: White Men, Artificial Flavorings, Preservatives. *Contains less than the minimum daily requirement of white women, and non-whites.” This poster was a direct hit at the art galleries, which exclusively showed white male artists, by means of humor and pop culture that made the message accessible and retainable. The 1989 Guerrilla Girls' code of Ethics for Art Museums was a poster that resembled the Ten Commandments, and humorously condemned nepotism and favoritism within the art world that excluded women artists. Finally, their humorous play on words within their catalog of works was a radical tactic to reclaim female power and take down male supremacy. By rejecting words like masterpiece (that indicates a male master created it), seminal (which refers to semen), and genius (which in Latin means testicales) the Guerrilla Girls both mocked and stripped language of male power. Ultimately, the posters’ high visibility and broad reach spread the message and garnered mass popular attention for the cause. While posters and billboards did the semipermanente work of spreading the message to large mobile audiences, the Guerrilla Girls themselves took more active and personal attacks through panels, letters and exhibitions. Through a government grant girls created a newsletter named Hot Flashes, a joke concerning menopause in women, which was used to "monitor sexism and racism in the art world." They proactively sent secret letters to offenders in the art community and gave them bogus awards, one such being "The Most Patronizing Art Preview." The girls made direct attacks on art museums such as the Whitney and the MoMa. In their Review of the Whitney they called out the poor treatment of women and people of color and encouraged supporters to “write a trustee today.” Additionally, The Guerrilla Girl Art Action Group demanded a "Call for Immediate Resignation of All the Rockefellers from the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Modern Art." In response, many institutions began to invite the Guerrilla Girls to exhibitions, since they recognized the growing support and influence the girls had, and, at the very least, wanted to be perceived as open to this new vision of change. As such, the girls were invited to the Palladium exhibition of 150 works by eighty-five women artists and the College Art Association held an “Anger Panel” where the girls played a tape claiming sarcastically that they were not mad at the art world. These invitations were messages in themselves that the Guerrilla Girls were being heard and that change was on the rise. In return, the girls gave a show to their critiques. Two panels were organized in dedication to the critics, one was called "Hidden Agender: An Evening with Critics'' and the other "Passing the Bucks: An Evening with Art Dealers." Anytime a panelist would say a statement that was sexist or racist, a Guerrilla Girl in full costume would interrupt them with "oh really?” to call them out in the moment. These interactions with critics changed the power dynamic. The Guerrilla Girls’ lack of fear empowered them to turn the conversation and put the criticism directed at women back on the critics and those who had excluded women at no cost to themselves for so long. The Guerrilla Girls knew that the art world was a microcosm of the society at large and believed that the power and privilege imbalances they were redressing had larger implications for women and other marginalized groups. One Guerrilla Girl stated that, "the big money art world is a world of privilege, and the patriarchy of western culture is accentuated in arenas of privilege." The art marketplace was notably unregulated, and so artists in New York City in the 1980s became pawns in a large money scheme, with collectors and dealers whilding the power. Women artists had the double burden of being both artists and females, making it nearly impossible for their work and themselves to be recognized and protected financially. Furthermore, since female artists were at the bottom of the hierarchy and had no influence on the market, and since biases were summarily overlooked, they felt “squeezed” creatively between social attitudes and their own self direction. The Guerrilla Girls recognized that these pressures stemming from the power imbalance were not exclusive to the art world and in fact were a reflection of white male privilege in the greater society; the art dealers and collectors were the privileged white men, artists were the excluded and marginalized. American painter and supporter of the Guerrilla Girls echoed that, "prejudice in the art world reflects prejudice in the culture at large." Understanding that the art world, at its root, would never be changed if society was frozen in its bias, and also that the art world has the power to affect change and influence society to progress, the Guerrilla Girls expanded their campaign. They began to include race as a major focus in their art world attacks and to spread awareness on topics outside of the art world such as abortion rights, the Gulf War, homelessness, rape, and Clarence Thomas. Ultimately, the girls’ mission broadened to reflect the shared reality of all marginalized people and to promote a vision of a future where "the age of isms is over.” Through the power of their popularity and their daring tactics, the Guerrilla Girls riled up the city in support of women in the art world and put pressure on the institutions that had excluded female artists. A supporter of the girls would later remark that the Guerilla Girls "almost single-handedly kept women's art activism alive over one of the worst decades I hope we'll see." The girls derived their mission from activist movements in the past, but with the addition of pop culture, humor, and shock value, they reanimated the women's movement that was too often overlooked in the 1980s and needed new traction. Although they were shocking like the activist women before them in America, they broke old barriers with new and innovative ways that helped to pave the way for future generations. While their origins were focused on the art world, their influence and the force of their demands helped shape the national conversation on societal change and equal participation. Bibliography Chave, Anna C. "The Guerrilla Girls' Reckoning." Art Journal 70, no. 2 (2011): 102-11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41430728. The Guerrilla Girls. Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls: By the Guerrilla Girls (whoever They Really Are) ; with an Essay by Whitney Chadwick. New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1995. ———. The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006. Withers, Josephine. "The Guerrilla Girls." Feminist Studies 14, no. 2 (1988): 285-300. https://doi.org/10.2307/3180154.

instagram.com/clarissa.ssa.art