Bulgarian Artist Luba Lukova

Luba Lukova is a poster artist best known for the stark symbolism of her illustrations on The New York Times op-ed page. "I want to speak metaphorically. In contemporary fine art I know that accessible is almost a dirty word. But I like my work to be accessible."

Lukova has lived in New York since 1991, and works out of a studio in Long Island City. On May 21 she hopes to become a U.S. citizen. First she has to pass the test. "I believe it's very basic questions. Maybe they ask you how many stars are on the American flag. I know they sell the questions with the answers on xerox copies somewhere in Chinatown. I'll have to buy one and read it."

For the moment, Lukova remains Bulgarian. "It was a great country to get my education," she says, "but I don't feel nostalgic." Lukova studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, where her training was classical. "My education was good, but it was censored a lot. All my knowledge about art was only until van Gogh. After van Gogh there was nothing."

Lukova graduated in 1986; two days after receiving her degree she got a call from the police informing her that she had to leave Sofia immediately. "They had this stupid regulation that you couldn't work in the capital city unless you were born there. I wasn't born in the capital, so I had to move." She moved to Blagoevgrad and worked as a designer for a theater company. "At the time I was devastated. Bulgaria is basically a small country, but when the restrictions are so tough, it seems like New York is closer to San Francisco than Sofia is to Blagoevgrad."

As an artist under the communist regime, Lukova's work was controlled by the artists' union. The union also controlled her correspondence with the outside world, so that while she lived in Blagoevgrad she was largely unaware of her popularity. "Last year I met a poster collector from Switzerland. He said the old joke was that all Bulgarian artists live in the same house. Because we all had the same address. It was the union's address."

When the Berlin Wall fell, the power of the union crumbled with it. Lukova began to represent herself, and in 1991 was invited to attend an international poster exhibit in Fort Collins, CO. "We were free to travel with the new passports, so I decided to go. I went very incognito, not to make contacts, just to see my own work in an exhibition for the first time."

On the way back from Colorado she stopped over in New York. "I never thought I would stay, because I had very little money and I didn't know anybody. Nobody except a relative from Switzerland, but she was going away to Hong Kong. She gave me the number of her friend who owned a laundry on the corner. Bayram. He was Turkish Bulgarian. He said, 'Okay, you can stay for a couple of days and you can help in the laundry.' One of the girls at the laundry had an extra room, so I lived with her."

Bayram said that she could find work if she wanted to, but without papers Lukova thought it impossible. She was strictly a tourist until she wandered into a Soho bookstore and leafed through a copy of the Graphis Design Annual. She found herself looking at her own work, posters that were submitted to Graphis by the artists' union without her knowledge. Lukova no longer wanted to return to Bulgaria.

Bayram told her to check out the help-wanteds. "I opened the Times and I saw all the illustrations. I thought, I can do this. Bayram said no, I was totally crazy. But I insisted, so he called the Times and they said I could drop off my portfolio. I had only like 10 slides of my work and also a copy of Graphis. So I drop this off and they tell me in two days you pick it up. When I pick it up they tell me to go upstairs, and immediately they give me a job. This guy, Bayram, he couldn't believe it when I came back to the laundry. But that's how everything started.

"You know, it's a great story, but I think it's not so unusual. Most immigrants to this country have a similar story."

Luba Lukova was recently named Unesco's Lauréat du 2001 prix Savignac and her work is in collection at MOMA. Her next New York show will be at James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary, April 23-May 10.