fierce pussy AND SO ARE YOU, 1991-2018

fierce pussy is a New York City-based queer art collective founded in 1991. Emerging out of ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), the collective responded to the urgency of the time -by using any and all readily available resources: old typewriters, personal baby pictures, found photographs as well as photocopying equipment accessible in the collective’s own day jobs. fierce pussy used public space to create lesbian visibility by wheat-pasting posters, distributing t- shirts, and renaming streets throughout the city, among other projects.

Originally fierce pussy was composed of a fluid and often shifting cadre of dykes, including Pam Brandt, Jean Carlomusto, Donna Evans, Alison Froling, and Suzanne Wright. Four of the original core members reconvened in 2008—Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard (currently on hiatus), and Carrie Yamaoka— continuing to work together as the current collective.

AND SO ARE YOU is a project in which fierce pussy has combined and remixed past works with new works, presenting multiple and overlapping aims; to reclaim and transform derogatory language into affirmations of identity; to challenge assumptions about identity, family, gender and appearance; and to take back public space for the LGBTQ community. The collective states, “Historically, public space has held a contradiction for queer people: on the one hand we have been invisible and on the other hand we are frequently the target of violence in public. Part of the impulse in making this work has been to let other queer people know that we are here, that queer people are everywhere—simply put, we make ourselves visible.” AND SO ARE YOU is not only making queer space, and expanding the circle of that queer space, but serves as a provocation, to resist the dire political climate we find ourselves in.