Mourning the Loss of an Art Icon
VALIE EXPORT Dies Shortly Before Her 86th Birthday
The renowned artist VALIE EXPORT died on Thursday in Vienna. She would have turned 86 in just a few days. VALIE EXPORT made headlines with her artworks and was considered one of Austria’s most influential artists.
The world-renowned media and performance artist, filmmaker, and feminist theorist VALIE EXPORT died on Thursday in Vienna, just a few days before her 86th birthday. The VALIE EXPORT Foundation announced this to the APA.
Born on May 17, 1940, in Linz as Waltraud Lehner, she became, under her stage name, arguably Austria’s best-known and most influential living artist, inspiring generations of artists.
Her first artwork, created in 1966, was a cigarette pack featuring her portrait and her stage name, which was inspired by the cigarette brand “Smart Export”: VALIE EXPORT. Written in all capital letters, it was intended to make an unmistakable statement: Here is someone to be taken seriously!
In fact, this was followed by performances such as “Tapp- und Tastkino” (1968), in which she allowed people to touch her bare breasts; the crotch-exposed “Action Pants Genital Panic”; or “From the Folder of Doggishness,” in which she led Peter Weibel on a dog leash through downtown Vienna, became icons of feminist art and an inspiration to several generations of female artists.
“Raised in a Household of Women”
“Igrew up inwhat is known asa ‘householdof women,’”VALIE EXPORT once recounted in an APA interview about her early upbringing. “My mother was a war widow. We were three sisters, and our mother had to make a life for herself with her three girls. Her goal was for each of her daughters to be able to go to college so they could have a better start in life and earn their own money.” Like few others, VALIE EXPORT embodies the unity of social, artistic, and personal transformation.
Became a mother at 18
When the young woman, who attended the School of Applied Arts in Linz after finishing convent school, had a child at 18 (she named her Perdita, the Lost One), she got married. But she soon broke with her bourgeois existence. In 1960, she moved to Vienna, studied textile design at the Higher Federal Teaching and Research Institute for the Textile Industry, and became part of the artistic circles surrounding the Vienna Group, Art Club, and “Strohkoffer.” Due to her “lifestyle,” she was stripped of custody of her daughter (who later also became a media artist).
Her work made headlines
In the milieu of Viennese Actionism, she also made headlines in the newspaper chronicles with her body actions and Expanded Cinema works. In 1970, she presented her first video work, “Split Reality,” in London; in the three-part television work “Das Bewaffnete Auge,” she engaged in a dialogue with the film avant-garde; her films “Unsichtbare Gegner,” “Menschenfrauen,” and “Die Praxis der Liebe” were shown at the Berlin Film Festival.
Her fundamental artistic concerns—“Body, Concept, Media”—have changed just as little as her struggle for emancipation, which today must hold its ground against a societal backlash, as the artist stated a little over a year ago: “It’s coming to the point again where women have to fight. That makes me sad and angry, because we’ve really accomplished a lot.”
VALIE EXPORT has participated in countless international exhibitions and film festivals. In 1980, she served as Austria’s official representative at the Venice Biennale alongside Maria Lassnig; in 2009, she was the curator. From 1991 to 1995, VALIE EXPORT was a professor of design with technical visual media, and in 1994–95 she also served as vice president of the Berlin University of the Arts. From 1995 to 2005, she taught as a professor of multimedia performance in Cologne.
Numerous awards
In 1995, she was awarded the EA-Generali Sculpture Prize; in 2000, she received the Oskar Kokoschka Prize and the Alfred Kubin Prize. In 2003, the artist received the Golden Medal of Honor of Vienna; in 2005, the Austrian Medal of Honor for Science and Art; and in 2009, an honorary doctorate from the University of Art and Design Linz. In 2014, she was honored in New York with the “Courage Award for the Arts,” established by Yoko Ono, which recognizes courageous artistic creation that defies social or political barriers.
A “very lively center” and a foundation
In 2017, the “VALIE EXPORT Center, Research Center for Media and Performance Art,” stocked with a purchased portion of the artist’s estate, opened in the Tabakfabrik in Linz. “It’s being put to very good use and has been very well received. We also have visiting professors and young artists writing their master’s theses or diploma projects,” the artist said happily. “It’s a very lively center.” In the future, the VALIE EXPORT Foundation will oversee the artist’s work.
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