VALIE EXPORT Rallies Against Catholicism and Conservatism Review by Kathrin Heinrich
Clad in a fur coat and heeled leather loafers, VALIE EXPORT might be the epitome of the Austrian postwar bourgeoisie – shaped by Catholicism and conservatism – were it not for the young man, artist Peter Weibel, that she leads on a leash like a dog. Documented in a series of black and white photographs, the performance Aus der Mappe der Hundigkeit (From the Portfolio of Dogness, 1968) is – along with Tapp und Tastkino (Grope and Touch Cinema, 1968) and Aktionshose: Genitalpanik (Action Pants: Genital Panic, 1969) – one of EXPORT’s most famous pieces. All three are included in ‘VALIE EXPORT: A Retrospective’ at Albertina, Vienna, which focuses on her work from the 1960s to the 1990s. Curated by Walter Moser, the show asserts the photographic as EXPORT’s modus operandi across all media, including performance, drawing and large-scale installation.
Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz in 1940, the artist appropriated the moniker VALIE EXPORT from a brand of cigarettes to distance herself from patriarchal family names. From the beginning, ‘expanded cinema’, as she terms it, was at the centre of her feminist practice, which opposed conservative Austrian society and the misogynist representation of the female body – particularly by Viennese actionists like Otto Muehl.
