FEMINIST PROTEST ART BY RACHAEL ROMERO

Rachael Romero was co-founder and principle artist of the San Francisco Poster Brigade (1975-1983). The Brigade distributed their work freely in order to raise awareness of a number of state abuses within the United States and beyond.

Across her work, Romero focuses on injustices by the state, with a particular focus on violence against women. The poster we used for our logo called for an end to forced sterilization, a state-sponsored program that led to more than 60,000 people being stripped of reproductive capabilites in the twentieth century United States, many without their consent. Informed by prevalent eugenicist thinking, victims of sterilization were disproportionately people of color and those with disabilities. 

In her more recent work, Romero has continued to draw attention to state violence. A 2011 collection, inspired by her own time incarcerated in the Convent of the Good Sherpherd (know as The Pines), South Australia, highlights the abuses women and girls suffered at the hands of the Catholic Church with the cooperation of the Australian government. Her focus on Magdalene laundries maintains the strong transnational focus that permeates much of Romero's work.

You can explore all the above works, and many others by Rachael Romero, at the Library of Congress.