VIENNA.- The Albertina presents “VALIE EXPORT. Retrospective,” a comprehensive exhibition devoted to the trailblazing media and performance artist VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940).

EXPORT became known from the late 1960s onward through her provocative performances and her critical approach to the mass media’s processes of reproduction and representation. A feminist artist, EXPORT looks fearlessly and radically into woman’s role in society and the arts, pointing out patriarchal structures that have painfully inscribed themselves in the female body.

With its thematic focal points, the exhibition offers an overview of EXPORT’s output between 1966 and 1998. The show comprises revolutionary early Expanded Cinema actions, symbol- laden performances, conceptual photographs, analytic language works, installations, and such urban interventions as the “Body Configurations.” A pioneer of performance and media art, EXPORT makes use of her own body as means of expression, thus always crossing the boundaries between diverse media genres. Time and again, the artist revisits themes and motifs in multiple media, relating them to one another in ever-new ways. At the interface of body art, film, installation, and drawing, the exhibition grants insights into EXPORT’S central themes, such as the relationship between “femininity” and representation, body and gaze, performance and image, and subject and space.

A special focus of the exhibition is on the relevance of photography for VALIE EXPORT’s oeuvre. Harnessed in most diverse ways, photography has played a central role from the outset, be it for the purpose of documentation, as an experiment, as part of multimedia installations, or as a work in its own right. EXPORT has staged some of her performances especially for them to be photographed. Her conceptual photographs of the 1970s critically question the equation of image and reality in the mass media. She thus reveals how they construct and define gender-specific images in the first place.

Besides some of EXPORT’s legendary works, including “TOUCH CINEMA” (1968), “Action Pants: Genital Panic,” or “BODY SIGN ACTION” (1970), the show presents works and installations for the first time that were especially realized for the ALBERTINA. “VALIE EXPORT. Retrospective” was compiled in a close dialogue with the artist, and in addition to many important loans will show capital works from the ALTERTINA’s own collection, comprising a rich selection of action photographs, filmic works, and installations.

Curator: Dr. Walter Moser