Founding member of Guerrilla Girls finally revealed after years of anonymity
After a life of anonymity, one of the founding members of feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls, known by the pseudonym Liubov Popova, has revealed herself to be American painter and sculptor Joyce Kozloff.
Since its formation in 1985, the feminist art collective has been a committed force fighting racism and misogyny in the art industry through any means necessary: exhibitions, takeovers, poster campaigns, and guerrilla-style tactics.
Now, in a new interview with Art Journal Open, the acclaimed pattern and decoration artist has broken her silence on the matter, revealing that she helped establish the collective before leaving in 1991.
“We decided to call ourselves the Guerrilla Girls, wear fishnet hose and short skirts, call out the worst misogynists in the art world, appear publicly in masks, like avengers,” Kozloff shared of her experience.
She added, “A new member had misunderstood our name, brought a gorilla mask to a meeting, and voila! We all had aliases, the names of dead women artists: I was Liubov Popova.”
Kozloff also revealed that she was one of the key writers of the famed text-based work, The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, which was released in 1988.
Kozloff shared that the idea for the project came to her during her Kohler Art/Industry Residency. There she watched male colleagues flounder and still achieve success, while “their girlfriends, who also did their housework, cooking and were unpaid studio assistants at the factory.”
Explaining why she has decided to come forward now, the artist revealed, “I’d had a pact with another Girl that whoever died first, the survivor would bring her out. But I suddenly realised that if I were dead, I couldn’t tell the story my way.”
The artist was also a key influencer on the topic of keeping their identities hidden: “I argued for anonymity because I didn’t want attention to be on us as individuals,” she revealed. “I wanted it to remain on the issues.”
