As art critic and editor of the LA Weekly Shana Nys Dambrot wrote, “Interdisciplinary artist Kulov is something of an agent provocateur. Their work across performance art, public installations, publishing, video, mail art, outdoor billboards and more, repurposes visual strategies of a post–Cold-War youth to insightfully comment on the current state of society and politics — in the art world and beyond. ...[Kulov's] work often sparks controversy, but always aims for progress toward a greater, more inclusive good.”
For Kulov, art can be a dramatic medium that can be employed as a lightning rod for social discourse.
The artist’s political public art and performances provide an alternative point of view, always intended to provoke thought and create public dialogue. From socially-charged visual commentaries and campaigns to provocative essays and unapologetically queer (and even trans-positive) performances, Kulov always successfully recycles American popular culture through their own inescapable socialist upbringing.
Kulov is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Art Matters Foundation. Their limited-edition book Kulov 90-00 > A Decade of Transformation is part of the artist’s book collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Their retrospective artist's book Kulov 90-15 > Twenty-Five Years of Political Public Art and Performances was released in 2018 (see video below). And Kulov's latest book, entitled The East, The West and the Restless and written as their performance-art character Malgorzata Romanska, is out now (see the 'books' or 'shop' sections above).
Click here to read a long-format version of this Artist's Statement and a personal account of Kulov's work over the years.
And click here to read an interview with Kulov in LA Weekly, as part of their series "Meet an Artist Monday," published on November 2, 2020.
Kulov identifies as Gender Nonconforming and prefers the pronouns they/them/their.
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