From men on dog leads to public breast-fondling, Valie Export's art demanded a total feminist revolution

"Since the 1960s, she was driven by a fierce conviction that art and media would play an essential role in women's liberation: that women must picture their own reality in the name of social progress. In Women's Art: A Manifesto (1972), she wrote that women must use art as a means of expression, so as to influence the consciousness of all of us. What she demanded was revolution."

"Her work was heavy with explicit threat and pain, and she made evident the violence of forcing women's bodies to inhabit structures that were not designed for them. For the 1973 performance Hyperbuliashe crept naked through a corridor of electrified wires, exposing herself voluntarily to shocks. She allowed me to use her 1976 photocollage The Birth Madonna for the cover of my book Acts of Creation."

"I wrote about the twin pressures Export had experienced as a mother: from the Catholic church on the one side, and the new consumer society on the other. Exposing a shifting power dynamic Tap and Touch Cinema in 1968. Photograph: No credit More recently I have written about sexuality and power, and the 1968 performance From the Portfolio of Doggedness, during which she led Peter Weibel crawling through the streets of Vienna by a dog lead."

"Export is deadpan, though you can spot a barely concealed smile. As I discovered in 2019, when I interviewed her for The Guardian, she certainly had a sense of fun. Export spoke with tremendous clarity about her work and the ideas underpinning it. She was also forthright about the circumstances in which she produc"

Valie Export pursued the conviction that art and media are essential to women’s liberation, insisting that women must picture their own reality for social progress. In Women’s Art: A Manifesto (1972), she demanded that women use art to express themselves and influence collective consciousness. Her work made visible the violence involved in forcing women’s bodies into structures not designed for them, often carrying explicit threat and pain. In Hyperbulia (1973), she crawled naked through electrified wires, exposing herself to shocks. Her imagery, including The Birth Madonna, provoked shock through violent symbolism. She also addressed sexuality and power, as in From the Portfolio of Doggedness (1968), where she led Peter Weibel crawling on a dog lead through Vienna.

Read at www.theguardian.com