Valie Export, a celebrated feminist artist and filmmaker, passed away at the age of 85. She was a punk, an intellectual, a feminist, a theorist, and incredibly brave and vulnerable. For many women, she was a true hero.
Since the 1960s, Valie Export was driven by a fervent belief in the power of art and media to advance women’s liberation. She asserted that women needed to create and represent their own realities to foster social progress. In her 1972 text, “Women’s Art: A Manifesto,” she articulated this by stating that women must “use art as a means of expression, so as to influence the consciousness of all of us.” Her ultimate aim was nothing less than a revolution.
Her work consistently draws me back, a compulsion I can’t shake. I’ve previously examined her art in the context of violence within women’s artistic expression. Valie Export’s pieces were often laden with overt threat and pain, vividly illustrating the violence inherent in compelling women’s bodies to exist within societal structures not designed for them. In her 1973 performance “Hyperbulia,” she moved naked through a corridor of electrified wires, deliberately exposing herself to electric shocks.