Conversation with Joyce Kozloff, New York, 2003

Joyce Kozloff joined the feminist movement in 1970 while living in Los Angeles as a young mother and artist, finding the consciousness-raising group transformative. “It was radicalizing—the commonalities among women from very disparate backgrounds and experiences… Within a very short amount of time, you saw the whole world from a feminist perspective.” Later that year, Kozloff connected with Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and other artists in the feminist art movement. They discussed the need for an organization of women artists in Los Angeles, which led Kozloff to help organize a protest against the Art and Technology exhibition at LACMA, where no women artists were represented. “The catalog was a grid with 50 faces, and they were all men.” This activism contributed to the historic exhibition Women Artists: 1550–1950, curated by Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland Harris.

Kozloff moved back to New York in 1971 and became part of the Heresies Collective, which produced the magazine Heresies. The magazine provided a platform for discussions on feminism, art, and politics, with each issue focusing on a different theme. “The ‘Great Goddess’ issue was our most successful, along with the ‘Sex’ issue.” In the 1970s, Kozloff was also part of the Pattern and Decoration Movement, which sought to break down the hierarchies between high art and craft. Driven by feminist ideas, the movement challenged the art world’s bias against decorative arts, often dismissed due to their association with women and non-Western cultures. Kozloff’s work during this period included ceramics, textiles, and public art installations. In the 1980s, she transitioned to creating large-scale public art projects, such as mosaics and ceramic tiles in subway stations.

Kozloff notes the generational shifts within the feminist art movement, observing that while her generation focused on women’s visceral and personal expressions, the next generation approached feminism more theoretically, often deconstructing language and cultural constructions of gender. Despite such tensions, Kozloff recognizes the importance of synthesizing these different perspectives.

In the 1990s, Kozloff began merging cartography and mapping into her practice. “The map became a structure into which I could weave all the things I've always been interested in: history, culture, decorative arts, architecture, language.” Kozloff also remained politically active, particularly in the anti-war movement. She helped form the group Artists Against War. “I was involved in the anti-war movement during Vietnam also. There’s a connection between that and feminism.” Throughout the conversation, Kozloff emphasizes the importance of collective action and the need for feminist art to address broader social and political issues.