Joey Skaggs Works

Joey Skaggs is a multi-media artist, activist, educator, satirist and notorious media prankster.

Beginning in the sixties, with his iconoclastic and controversial performance art protests, Skaggs realized he could use art to challenge the status quo. Appalled at the cultural hypocrisy he saw around him, especially how it was blindly supported and propagated by the mass media, he began to satirize social issues with elaborate public performances contrived to attract their attention. For each one, he portrayed a fabricated character frequently adopting a pseudonym with some facsimile of his name. He incorporated guerrilla tactics, traditional advertising, public relations techniques and social media to promote the staged performances, pioneering the use of the media as his medium.

Journalists, not recognizing the many clues to his identity, became unwitting collaborators, reporting his satires as news.

His work is ephemeral, taking place in the public arena in real time. Realizing that people would never believe these stories if he didn’t have proof, he collected the television, radio and print coverage. It is this rich archival material that now brings joeyskaggs.com to life.

Browse Joey’s work by category, decade, or the A-Z list below and on the sidebar.