Street artist celebrates women who ran for office in 2018: 'It's time to lift them up'

There’s a new female street artist who goes by the alias “Hysterical Men” and she’s making feminism a more noticeable part of the Philadelphia landscape.

Her most recent work is a powerful black and white mural that features congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Veronica Escobar, Sharice Davids, Deb Haaland, and Lauren Underwood looking triumphant surrounded by the names of all the women who won Senate, House, and gubernatorial races on Election Day in 2018.

Both Representatives Tlaib and Omar reposted the mural (located in Philly’s Queen Village) on their social media accounts. “You are wonderfully talented,” Congresswoman Omar commented on Hysterical Men’s Instagram account. “I wish you could come do a piece in my office, this is too cool!”

“I wanted to celebrate all the Democratic women who won their elections in the 2018 midterms, choosing words that I think should be associated with women more often like ‘leadership’ and ‘strength,’” the artist tells MAKERS.

Hysterical Men, who prefers to remain anonymous, says her guerrilla art was prompted by the frustration she felt with the “hysteria” and “overly emotional” behavior of men when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford brought forth sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in September.

She was shocked as she watched Ford testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee with “these men were acting with impunity and being commended for it!” she says. “Meanwhile, Dr. Ford was so composed as any woman in her situation would have to be.”

“I started making these rage portraits of these men using words that are typically used to demean women: moody, hysterical, petty, shrill.”

Hysterical Men then collaborated with local female artist Symone Salib, who helped create a mural of Dr. Ford alongside Anita Hill with the words “Believe Us” surrounded by Hysterical Men’s portraits of prominent male political figures.

For her next project, Hysterical Men was energized by all the elected women who would storm the chambers of Congress following the 2018 midterm elections, particularly the incoming women of color at the center of the mural who have been “speaking so boldly in the face of such a chilling resurgence of overt sexism, racism and xenophobia.”

“These are women of color who have traditionally been treated the worst out of anyone in our society,” she says. “It’s time to lift them up, to look to their leadership and celebrate them.”

She now plans to use street art regularly to promote intersectional feminism in the City of Brotherly Love.

“It’s easy to say ‘Oh, maybe I’m not informed enough, or eloquent enough, or not a good enough artist,’ or so many things,” she told MAKERS. “But I think so many women have shown us that we just have to take a seat at the table and try.”

“It may be scary, but I feel like if not me, if not us, then who?” the artist says. “We’ve got to do it.”