Pioneering feminist artist VALIE EXPORT has died age 85.
Born in Linz in 1940, the artist adopted the name VALIE EXPORT in 1967, asserting that she did not want to have the name of her father or of her former husband, and started her artistic career. A year later, she performed her now iconic action TAP and TOUCH Cinema where, wearing a curtained Styrofoam box around her chest, she and her collaborator Peter Weibel invited passersby to touch her naked breasts. Also in 1968, performing Action Pants: Genital Panic, she entered a cinema in Munich with crotchless pants, walking among the seated viewers with her genitals exposed.
Through photography, film and expanded cinema performances, VALIE EXPORT continuously explored notions of self-determination and politics of the body, confronting ideas of the passive female subject in works that were often seen as shocking at the time.
She participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including documenta 6 (1977) and 12 (2007). In 1980, she and Maria Lassnig became the first women to represent Austria at the Venice Biennale. Her work was also shown at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2007; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 2009; Belvedere Museum, Vienna, 2010; Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, 2017; Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2023; Albertina, Vienna, 2023; C/O Berlin Foundation, 2024; MAK Center for Art and Architecture at Schindler House, Los Angeles, 2024.
VALIE EXPORT also taught at several institutions including the University of Wisconsin, the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of the Arts, Berlin, and the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne.
