INTERVIEW: DIVA CORP

the anonymous art critics disrupting the art world

The cover image of this post is from a video by Petra Cortright, in which she reads Diva Corp’s poem “Gun,” inspired by Gregory Corso’s poem “Bomb.”

If you’re in the art scene at all, you might already know about Diva Corp. For those unfamiliar, they’re an LA-based collective of anonymous art critics, founded sometime in 2024, and already stirring up shit in the art world.

Through its often unforgiving reviews of LA art shows, disseminated mostly through Instagram text posts — and a running critique of the institution of art criticism itself — the collective has positioned itself as something of a vigilante inside a culture of criticism it sees as too polite and too tolerant of mediocrity. The result is art that neither pushes the envelope formally, nor meaningfully responds to the conditions of the present, including the visual culture of the internet.

Diva Corp is here to bring back the negative consequences. If the spirit of art has been shackled by its own interpreters, then Diva Corp’s mission is to liberate it.

Recently their interventions have moved beyond the written word, blurring the line between art and art criticism, if there really ever was a line to begin with. Case in point: a staged disruption of an art critics’ panel at which they were invited to speak. Some people called it trolling. Diva Corp called it performance art. LA scene tabloid On the Rag called it “The Art Center MFA Critics Massacre.”

Anyway, I recently interviewed Diva Corp in Office Magazine. More ♡ HERE ♡