Joyce Kozloff Reveals Herself as Guerrilla Girls Founding Member
After decades of anonymity, the feminist artist and activist disclosed in an interview that she is the woman behind the mask of “Liubov Popova.”
Artist and activist Joyce Kozloff has taken off the mask after 41 years, disclosing in a new interview with Art Journal Open that she was among the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls.
She also revealed that “Liubov Popova” was her assigned pseudonym within the collective, whose members took the names of late women artists to maintain their own anonymity. In 2016, she published a (sneaky) biographical essay in Hyperallergic that both examined and lauded the Russian artist's creative evolution and career milestones throughout her unfortunately short life.
“No one pressed me into coming out,” Kozloff explained in an email to Hyperallergic after the interview had come out. “Over the years, there were many members of the community who knew at least some of our identities. But there was a closing of the ranks to protect us, which always moved me. It never leaked to the press. We used to say, when asked, ‘All women are Guerrilla Girls,’ and I believe that.”
The artist added that over 50 women have been inducted into the Guerrilla Girls since 1985, and that “most, but not all, of the women have already come out.”
