, she fundamentally altered the feminist art movement by confronting the male gaze and systemic media misogyny.
Discrepancies in the Final Days
Reports regarding the exact timing of Export’s death vary slightly between major outlets. The Guardian reported that the artist’s own foundation announced her passing on Thursday evening, May 14, in Vienna, just three days before her 86th birthday. However, The New York Times stated she died on May 15.
The cause of death was provided by her longtime gallerist, Thaddaeus Ropac, who confirmed she passed away in a hospital following complications from a fall at her home in the Austrian capital.
Confronting the Voyeurism of Cinema
Export did not merely create art; she staged interventions. In the late 1960s, she launched a series of low-budget performances that scandalized Germany and Austria, forcing audiences to move from passive observation to uncomfortable interaction.
In 1968, she executed
. Export entered a Munich movie theater wearing crotchless pants, placing her exposed genitals directly in the sightline of the audience. The performance was a calculated strike against the cinematic experience.
“Now you will see in reality what you normally see on the screen.”
Valie Export, via The New York Times
Export later explained that the intention of the piece was to
. To emphasize the confrontational nature of the work, she posed for a commemorative photograph a year later wearing the same all-black, crotchless outfit, accessorized with a machine gun.
That same year, she debuted
(Tap and Touch Cinema), first at a Vienna film festival and subsequently in nine other European cities. Export strapped a cardboard or aluminum “cinema” box to her chest, complete with a small curtain. She invited passersby to reach through the curtain and touch her bare breasts, while her colleague Peter Weibel used a megaphone to rally the crowd and a stopwatch to time each interaction.
The Evolution from Waltraud Lehner to VALIE EXPORT
The persona of VALIE EXPORT was a deliberate act of liberation. Born Waltraud Lehner in 1940 in Linz, she was raised by a single mother and left a convent school at 14 to study at the local School of Arts and Crafts. Her early adulthood was marked by a rapid departure from traditional domesticity; she married and had a child before age 20, but quickly chose divorce to pursue studies in Vienna.
“I thought: this is not my life, being married and a mother,”
Valie Export, via The Guardian
In 1967, she discarded her birth name and her former husband’s name, Hollinger, adopting the alias VALIE EXPORT. The name was a hybrid of a childhood nickname and a brand of cigarettes called Smart Export.
This defiance of social norms often carried legal consequences. In 1970, Export was sentenced on pornography charges due to her role as co-editor of a book on Viennese Actionist art. The legal fallout was severe: a judge temporarily withdrew her custody rights for her daughter.
Institutional Impact and the Venice Biennale
Despite the early scandals, Export eventually became a cornerstone of the international art establishment. In 1968, she co-founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative, and her presence in global exhibitions grew steadily. She participated in Kassel’s documenta in 1977 and 2007, and achieved a historic milestone in 1980.
At the 39th Venice Biennale in 1980, Export and Maria Lassnig became the first female artists to fill the Austrian pavilion. Export’s centerpiece for the show,
(Birth Bed), was a visceral exploration of the female form. The installation featured an outsized female abdomen with crooked legs on a mattress, red neon strip lights streaming from the vulva, and a television transmitting a Catholic mass where the head would typically be.
The legacy of her work is characterized by an uncompromising refusal to let the female body be a passive object. As Artforum noted via Thaddaeus Ropac, Export was one of the most visionary feminist artists to emerge in Europe during the second half of the 20th century.
“Her passing marks the loss of a singular perspective in contemporary art, one that influenced artists across generations. Her pioneering work continues to be of such great urgency.”
Thaddaeus Ropac, Gallerist
<!– /wp:quote Her legacy remains a cornerstone in feminist art, inspiring ongoing discourse and admiration within the contemporary art world.
