VALIE EXPORT in Milan 'Nowadays we see the body in all its diversity'

By Hannah Silver 

In the 1960s, feminist artists were increasingly looking to express what it is to be female, in ways outside of a language dominated by men. For Valie Export in Vienna, and for Ketty La Rocca [1938 - 1976] in Florence, this meant exploring the potential of the body itself. For Export, the naked body became a medium for discovery - in work TouchCinema (1968) she invited viewers to touch her breasts through a box, her body the cinema screen and her audience the participators. For La Rocca, this same philosophy took shape through looking inwards. The X-Ray images of a skull in her Craniologie series (1973) are double-exposed with photographs of her hands, emphasising the need for both the mind and the body.

Although the two never met, their careers ran on parallel paths. Both confronted the patriarchal language in often controversial visual experiments; sometimes through a linguistic play, sometimes semiotic or sexual, but always with a sharp and defiant eye. It is fitting, then, that their works have now been placed in dialogue, with an exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Milan drawing works from both their portfolios.

Why now? ‘Nowadays we don't just see the female body, we see the body in all its diversity,’ says Export, who lives and works in Vienna. ‘We are now ready to accept that we also have so-called male attributes in our female bodies. The classification of male and female is no longer accurate. The prevailing politics, the restrictive politics, tells us that we have a female body and a male body, but that is a reduction to black and white and nothing more, because that black and white is easier to control.’

In both her work and La Rocca’s, this unequivocal thinking is teased into new shapes, with the language taking on new purposes and meanings. A shared retrospective has never felt more timely - here, Export tells us how it feels to revisit the work now.