"Deploying the body in novel and provocative ways, EXPORT shocked viewers with what she called "acts of protest" against a conservative society, whose mores she challenged through such now-canonical, humor-inflected works that centered the female body and female sexual agency. Though her efforts garnered her hate mail, death threats, and court charges of indecency, EXPORT remained undeterred."
""We don't have witches now, we live in a modern time, but if we want witches, we must take Valie Export and burn her!" trumpeted an Austrian newspaper following a performance of her renowned Tapp und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema), 1968, in which she framed her naked breasts with a miniature cardboard theater and allowed passersby to grope them. "She lets people touch her breasts and she says, celluloid you can burn but Valie Export you can't.""
"Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz, Austria, on May 17, 1940, the artist was raised by a single mother in a country shattered by war and struggling with its Nazi past. EXPORT was educated at a convent school, and would later cite the rituals and ceremonies of the Catholic Church as an artistic influence. The artist determined early on that men had it better than women-"In the beginning was the word and the word was a man," she wrote at age thirteen-and subsequentl"
VALIE EXPORT, a radical performance artist, filmmaker, and sculptor, died in Vienna at age eighty-five. Her work deployed the body in novel, provocative ways and presented “acts of protest” against a conservative society. Humor-inflected works centered the female body and female sexual agency, influencing artists across generations. She faced hate mail, death threats, and court charges of indecency, yet continued her practice undeterred. Her 1968 Tapp und Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) framed her naked breasts in a miniature cardboard theater and allowed passersby to grope them, drawing intense backlash. Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz, Austria, she was raised by a single mother after World War II and later cited Catholic rituals and ceremonies as artistic influences.
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