Bad Girls was a 1994 exhibition curated by Marcia Tucker. The show opened at the New Museum, in New York City, January 14, 1994. It was presented in two parts, part 1 lasting from January 14 to 27, 1994, and part 2 from March 5 to April 10, 1994.
Bad Girls was a humorous and transgressive look at gender and feminist issues. It featured work from artist across many media, including photo, painting, sculpture, performance, film, comics, advertisements, writings and more. The show was accompanied by film screenings, performances, and events. The exhibition had mixed reviews at the time and has continued to vex many critics, however, it is now seen as a crucial piece in a lineage of third-wave feminist exhibitions.
Artists
Ann Agee
Laura Aguilar
Janine Antoni
Penny Arcade
Xenobia Bailey
Lillian Ball
Linda Barry
Elizabeth Berdann
Camille Billops
Molly Blieden
Keith Boadwee
Andrea Bowers
Lisa Bowman
Barbara Brandon
Jennifer Camper
Renee Cox
Margaret Curtis
Jeanne Dunning
Nancy Dwyer
Freida
Matt Groening
The Guerrilla Girls
Jaqueline Hayden
Maxine Hayt
Janet Henry
Amy Hill
Robin Kahn
Nina Kuo
Pat Lasch
Lauren Lesko
Rhonda Lieberman
Mable Maney
Yasumasa Morimura
Portia Munson
Chuck Nanney
Reno
Erika Rothenberg
Veronica Saddler
Monique Safford
Sybil Sage
Joyce Scott
Beverly Semmes
Susan Silas
Coreen Simpson
Elaine Tin Nyo
Cammie Toloui
Carmelita Tropicana
Dani Tull
Shari Urquhart
Carrie Mae Weems
Judith Weinperson
Pae White
Millie Wilson
Sue Williams
Style
Bad Girls brought together works spanning many diverse styles and media. The common thread being humor. Within that category works tended to be avant-garde eschewing more traditional forms of even traditional media like painting and sculpture. Many works combined found objects. See Pink Project by Portia Munson, 1994. Interactive exhibits by the Guerilla Girls, Sybil Sage, Nancy Dwyer and Amy Hill. The sheer size of the exhibition may have led critics to see it as a feminist survey, however, the conspicuous absence of many renowned feminist names would speak otherwise. "The show includes drawings for feminist cartoons like Lynda Barry's God's Gift and Jennifer Camper's If Men Got Pregnant. It has a reading area with books like The Four Elements, by Roz Chast, Bad Girls Do It: An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers, by Michael Newton, and the comic book anthology Twisted Sisters: A Collection of Bad Girl Art."
Concept
The show was conceptualised by curators Marcia Tucker and Marcia Tanner. Tanner also curated a sister show Bad Girls West at the UCLA Wight Gallery in Los Angeles. Tanner contributed significantly to the project and wrote one of several essays in the show's catalogue by the same name.
Both curators were influenced heavily by humorous takes on feminism. Marcia Tucker writes, "The work that particularly fascinated me and pushed me to rethink a lot of old issues had two characteristics in common. It was funny, really funny, and it went 'too far'."
Carnival is also frequently cited in the show's catalogue as a major influence. The ability of a carnavalesque sensibility to subvert norms and to turn the world on end can be a powerful weapon in feminist critiques and artworks and was used as such in the Bad Girls Exhibition. It had the added benefit of turning observers into participants and therefore creating a sense of community especially among a diverse audience. The show challenged an often prevailing view that feminist shows must be comprised strictly by women, another way in which it turned the common narrative on its head. It contained works by several men speaking about feminist ideas. In an interview in Paradoxa, Marcia Tucker stated, "I decided to open up the territory usually assigned to 'Bad Girls' to include men whose work also resists power and authority, and subverts social and cultural stereotypes in a feminist way. In my opinion, laughter is the first and finest form of self-criticism, and, when used by artists as a feminist tool, it can very effectively challenge even the biases which feminism itself sometimes constructs."