VALIE EXPORT Petri / fikation, 1976

A pioneer in photography, video, installation and performance art with a career spanning five decades, VALIE EXPORT has produced one of the most influential bodies of feminist art in the post-war period. Exhibited for the first time in the Austrian Pavilion at the 39th Venice Biennale in 1980, Petri / fikation (1976) interrogates the idea of the female body as a cultural record. For these works, EXPORT recreated the postures of two women from the English poet and artist William Blake’s watercolour Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab (c.1795). In his painting, Blake captures the pathos of this Biblical scene from the Book of Ruth, in which Naomi informs her daughters-in-law that she is leaving for her native land of Judah, imploring them to return to their mothers’ homes in Moab. Ruth clings to Naomi while Orpah turns away in tears to obey her instructions, poses that are transposed onto a real female body in EXPORT’s photographs. By physically mapping these cultural expectations onto her own body, EXPORT explores the ways in which the female body is adapted to conform to culture and determined by the male gaze.