| | | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT: VALIE EXPORT – SMART EXPORT
self-portrait, 1970
ALBERTINA, Wien – The ESSL Collection
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
photo: Gertraud Wolfschwenger | | | | | | The Photographs | | | | 25 February – 29 May 2023 | | | | Opening: Friday, 24 February, 6pm | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT: Portfolio of Doggedness (VALIE EXPORT, own words, conversation with
Elisabeth Lebovici), in cooperation with Peter Weibel, 1968
courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022 ProLitteris, Zurich
photo: Joseph Tandl | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs is the first exhibition to focus on the photographic oeuvre of the artist VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940), whose at times provocative performances and experimental installations have been a source of controversy. The show examines EXPORT’s use of photography as a critical exploration of processes of depiction and representation. At the interface of film, video art, drawing and body art the photographs offer a new perspective on her creative oeuvre.
VALIE EXPORT’s multimedia work eludes any simplistic categorisation or definition. As a pioneer of performance art, installation art and video art, EXPORT has consistently broken through the boundaries separating media genres, while using her own body as an artistic medium. Photography has always played a key role in her practice – be it for documentary or experimental purposes, as an element in multimedia installations or as art in its own right.
EXPORT has had a constant awareness of the importance of visually recording her performances. Back in 1968 two of her best-known performances, TAPP und TASTKINO and the action Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit, were attended by photographers (and filmmakers). For the performance TAPP und TASTKINO, a request was put out by megaphone asking spectators and passers-by to touch EXPORT’s breasts, which were covered by a box inspired by a cinema auditorium with a curtain that the artist wore like a garment. Participants had to maintain eye contact with EXPORT for a defined period of time while touching her, with the artist thereby reversing the voyeuristic male gaze, a typical feature of cinema. For Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit, EXPORT took artist Peter Weibel through the centre of Vienna on a lead, with him crawling on all fours, provocatively drawing attention to the prevailing gender relations and power dynamics by reversing them. | | | | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT: BODY SIGN B, 1970
ALBERTINA, Wien – The ESSL Collection
© VALIE EXPORT
photo: Gertraud Wolfschwenger | | | | | | Photography was not merely used to make a complete document of EXPORT’s work. Rather, action and photography entered into a dialogue, creating a mutual dependency between them: on the one hand, actions were recorded (and ultimately communicated too) by means of photography; on the other, by virtue of their production, publication and reception – especially of key moments such as the interaction between artist and participants in TAPP und TASTKINO and their switch of perspective – EXPORT’s action photos acquired a status that was independent of the performances.
EXPORT’s focus on the critical examination of mechanisms of representation dates right back to the start of her career, when she began dealing with the different characteristics of the photographic image and imaging media, questioning the way they worked and subjecting photography to conceptual analysis by lifting the lid on the conditions governing the technical processes of image-making. Deconstructing the photographic gaze and its implicit power structures were of key importance here.
For EXPORT, the critical analysis of systems of representation invariably went hand in hand, in the context of both media and society, with a questioning of the male gaze directed at a body viewed as female. Making reference to her own body, she repeatedly probed the role of the woman, the artist and the subject in patriarchal sociopolitical structures. In 1970, for example, EXPORT had a garter tattooed on her thigh for Body Sign Action to give visible expression to the woman’s status as a sexual object and projection surface for male fantasies. Besides capturing the act of being tattooed, EXPORT also took photographs of the tattoo itself. The work expresses the pain involved – quite literally – in having patriarchal norms inscribed on a body that is seen as female. With her series Body Configurations (1972–1982), EXPORT investigates the relationships between the subject and power-political structures through body postures too. She explicitly couches her critique of the processes of depiction and representation in feminist terms: her work centres on the relationship between subject and space, body and gaze, femaleness and representation.
The exhibition VALIE EXPORT – The Photographs, which was devised in close collaboration with the artist, focuses on the impact that photography has had on her creative output. However, following the logic of EXPORT’s work, the exhibition not only presents photographs but also juxtaposes different media and works created between 1968 and 2007.
The exhibition is curated by Walter Moser and produced in cooperation with the Albertina, Vienna. | | | | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT: Nachfügung, 1974
courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich
photo: Eric Timmermann | | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT was born in 1940 in Linz, Austria, and now lives and works in Vienna. She is one of the pioneers of performance art and conceptual art. In 1967, in what was a radical gesture at the time, she gave up her father’s and her ex-husband’s names and laid claim to a new identity, VALIE EXPORT. Her works have been shown worldwide as part of numerous solo and group exhibitions. EXPORT has taught at various international institutions and was a professor for performance and multimedia at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne from 1995 to 2005. The VALIE EXPORT Center Linz was established through the acquisition of the artist’s estate in 2015, thus laying the foundations for an international research centre to foster artistic and academic engagement with media art and performance art. | | | | | | | | | VALIE EXPORT: DIVIDE ET IMPERA! after: Martin Schongauer, The Holy Family, 1475–1480, 1976
courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and the artist
© VALIE EXPORT, 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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