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After years of keeping her identity hidden, a feminist artist and activist has revealed in an interview that she is the person behind the mask of “Liubov Popova.”
Joyce Kozloff, an artist and activist, has revealed her identity after 41 years, stating in a recent interview with Art Journal Open that she was one of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls.
Kozloff disclosed that “Liubov Popova” was her pseudonym within the group, a name she used to preserve anonymity. In 2016, she penned a biographical essay for Hyperallergic that praised the Russian artist’s work and achievements during her short life.
“Being anonymous was a key decision for the Guerrilla Girls,” Kozloff shared with curators Maura Reilly and Helena Reckitt in the magazine’s Feminist Interview Project. She clarified, “It wasn’t about avoiding reprisals but about keeping the focus on the issues rather than on us as individuals.”
Kozloff recalled that she and two other women were among the seven founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, having experienced the women’s movement of the 1970s. She noted that the younger members felt there was a growing disinterest in feminism, advocating for new language and imagery.
After moving to Los Angeles when her husband Max began teaching at the California Institute of the Arts, Kozloff joined a feminist consciousness-raising group in 1971, which quickly radicalized her. This led to her co-organizing the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists (LACWA), which protested the lack of female representation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Upon returning to New York in the early ’70s, Kozloff’s involvement in the feminist art movement grew. She became a founding member of the Heresies Collective, and her work in public art contributed to the Pattern and Decoration movement.
The LACWA’s approach of using data-driven protests set the stage for the Guerrilla Girls, whose name originated from a misunderstanding that led to the adoption of their iconic gorilla mask. The group’s initial actions included an ad campaign highlighting the disparity between female artists exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and artworks depicting nude women.
The group’s bold posters publicly criticized institutions, galleries, and collectors for maintaining sexist and racist practices, garnering significant attention and speculation about the members’ identities. “People were upset and wanted to expose us,” Kozloff told Reckitt and Reilly, noting her involvement with the Guerrilla Girls until 1991.
Kozloff also played a role in creating one of the group’s most memorable poster campaigns, “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist” (1988). She explained to Art Journal Open that the idea emerged during a residency where married male artists brought younger partners as unpaid assistants.
“When I returned, I drafted ‘The Disadvantages of Being a Woman Artist,'” Kozloff recounted. “Our posters always included verifiable data, so this was a departure. But our astute members flipped it to ‘Advantages,’ and it worked!”
Reflecting on the past four decades, Kozloff acknowledged significant progress in the representation of women in the arts. However, she expressed concern over current challenges to women’s progress politically, citing the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the far-right’s push to confine women to domestic roles, and the beauty industry’s pressure on maintaining youthfulness.
“But we can’t dictate what the next generation should do; they will find their paths,” she concluded.
