The art world remembers Valie Export, Austrian pioneer of feminist performance art

The Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT, a pioneering figure in feminist performance and media art, died on 14 May at age 85, three days before her 86th birthday, according to confirmation by her dealer Thaddaeus Ropac. Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz in 1940, EXPORT became known for works that centered the female body as a site of political agency, including TAPP und TASTKINO (Tap and Touch Cinema), performed across ten European cities from 1968 to 1971, and her Body Configurations series (1972–76) made in Vienna’s urban landscape. Tributes came from writers and institutions including Hettie Judah in The Guardian, the Neuenationalgalerie in Berlin (which is showing documentation of Tap and Touch Cinema in its Extreme Tension presentation through 25 April 2027), and Belvedere director Stella Rollig, who cited EXPORT’s role in the planned exhibition Feminist Futures Forever. The article also recalls EXPORT’s 2019 London presentation at Thaddaeus Ropac of her Gerburtenbett (Birth Bed) installation (1980) and her statement to The Art Newspaper that the #MeToo era had achieved “only 10%” of feminism’s mission, pointing to wage disparity as a persistent problem.

Read the full article at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events