Feminist Art Workers

The Feminist Art Workers were a collaborative feminist performance group created in 1976 by Candace Compton, Laurel Klick, Nancy Angelo, and Cheri Gaulke. The group formed after teaching together for the Summer Art Program at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles. Compton left the group shortly after its inception and Vanalyne Green joined in 1978. The Feminist Art Workers were recognized for their combination of performance art and feminist pedagogy and their emphasis on making art in a non-hierarchical collaborative way. The group's main period of activity was from 1977 to 1981, although they also had multiple retrospective projects from 2008 to 2012.

Notable performances include Heaven or Hell? (1977), first performed at the Chicago lesbian restaurant Mama Peaches, in which forks were attached to four-foot-long poles and used as banquet props for guests to try to feed themselves (Hell) or work together to feed each other (Heaven); This Ain't No Heavy Breathing (1978), in which the artists chose random numbers from the phone book and called women to wish them a good day; and Bills of Rights (1980), in which the artists distributed "dollar bills" printed with information about the salary gap between men and women and urged recipients to support the Equal Rights Amendment. In later years, the Feminist Art Workers produced a documentary video for the Making It Together exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2008), created retrospective installations for the Trajector Art Fair in Brussels (2011) and for the Doin' It in Public exhibition at the Otis College of Art and Design (2011-2012), and also performed Heaven or Hell? as part of the latter exhibition.