Curated by Oliver Baudach, Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum (Berlin, Germany)

and Catherine Tedford, St. Lawrence University Art Gallery (Canton, NY, USA)

Sticker boards from the exhibition and stickers for display case. A curators’ statement and exhibition contents are listed below.

SHE SLAPS 2.0! features close to 600 street art stickers by 118 contemporary women artists from 22 countries around the world. Drawn from the private collection of Oliver Baudach, founder and director of Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum in Berlin, Germany, the exhibition includes stickers that were individually drawn, painted, and/or printed by the artists, as well as silkscreen, offset, and digital designs that were printed in larger runs through commercial services.

In 2019, Baudach sent out a worldwide call-for-entries for new stickers to create the SHE SLAPS exhibition and to add to St. Lawrence University’s Street Art Graphics digital archive. A second worldwide call was issued in 2023 for the expanded 2.0 edition of the exhibition.

The exhibition includes portraits of women and men, fanciful “character design” creatures, and various images and texts that function as artists’ “tags.” Female personas represented in the exhibition range from dolls, punks, and riot grrls to femmes fatales and leading ladies. A handful of artists address political subjects, with one artist using photos of her cat Illchmann as a spoof on “Grumpy Cat” in order to comment on sexism, racism, and gun violence.

The exhibition organizers also noted that the stickers in the show, with few exceptions, exclude images of violence, skulls, or military-related themes often found in stickers by some male artists. Several artists contributed works that are part of an ongoing global campaign called “Streetart Against Hate: To Live and Let Live,” in which artists can download circular templates with text in different languages and design their own stickers.

When asked, many artists in the exhibition indicated that identifying as a female affected their work, while others felt that gender and sexuality did not play a role. All of the artists indicated a strong sense of solidarity among street artists in general, however, whether male or female.

-Catherine Tedford

In accompanying text panels, artists responded to the following prompts:

  • Please provide a brief description of your work.
  • Does being a female artist, or identifying as a female artist, influence your work, and if so, how?
  • What’s the best thing about being a female artist in the sticker world?
  • Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Featured artists (see full list of artists and IG accounts)
– Allison Tanenhaus (USA)
– Ankana (USA)
– Art.Omato (Germany)
– Balo (Slovenia)
– Brainoon (Germany)
– Das Frohlein Moodmacher (Germany)
–  Fymsa (Russia)
– Metraeda (Germany)
– Orble (Germany)
– Stickermaid (Germany)
– Yarn Vandalette (Germany)

Exhibition contents
– 
Twenty-seven framed sets of 596 stickers grouped by artists and themes; one set of eleven 3D stickers for display case
– A main text panel with exhibition overview and twelve individual text panels with artists’ statements
– Sticker-related publications and sticker rolls for display cases and hands-on viewing
– Press release and image files for publicity

For information about scheduling and fees, contact Catherine Tedford at [email protected]. To view photos from the #nohatefamily sticker campaign, visit https://www.instagram.com/levveunlevvelosse/.

The German Academic Exchange Service provided initial funding in 2017 to develop the first SHE SLAPS! exhibition. A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the U.S. Council of Independent Colleges in 2018 provided funding support to St. Lawrence University to catalogue stickers by women artists for the Street Art Graphics digital archive.