Leslie Labowitz-Starus
| Leslie Labowitz-Starus | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 28, 1946 Uniontown, Pennsylvania |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Otis College of Art and Design |
| Notable work | Three Weeks in May (1977) |
Leslie Labowitz-Starus is an American performance artist and urban farmer based in Los Angeles.
Leslie Labowitz-Starus' work is in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum and has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Getty Museum.
Born in August 28, 1946 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Labowitz-Starus is the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor. She earned her MFA from Otis in 1972, then moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar. In Düsseldorf, Labowitz-Starus attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where she briefly interacted with Joseph Beuys (he was dismissed from his position the semester she arrived).
When she returned to Los Angeles in 1977, Labowitz-Starus worked at the Women's Building, a cultural center just east of Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles devoted to feminist art and cultural change.
From 1977 to 1980, Labowitz-Starus and Suzanne Lacy collaborated on a series of large-scale performances that often took place in public settings. Their first collaboration was In Mourning and in Rage. Together they founded Ariadne: A Social Art Network, a support system for women artists. In 1977, Labowitz-Starus and Lacy created Three Weeks in May, an extended performance work designed to increase visibility and start conversations about sexual violence against women. Created in response to the Hillside Strangler murders in Los Angeles, the 21-day project involved more than 30 events, including demonstrations, news media interviews, and self-defense classes. The artists updated a map with reports from the Los Angeles Police Department, printing the word "rape" on spots on a map of the greater Los Angeles area wherever a rape was reported. This performance art activist piece took place on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall and garnered major media attention.
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