Whether for purposes of documentation, as experiments, or as independent works: photography plays a central role in the oeuvre of the great media and performance artist VALIE EXPORT. Beginning in the 1970s and in an international context from quite early on, EXPORT produced conceptual photographs that critically examine visual images’ and mass media’s modes of functioning, portrayal, and perception.

These photographs, whose public appearances have so far been quite rare, stand at the center of this exhibition at ALBERTINA MODERN: they afford new insights into the artist’s oeuvre, being situated at the interface between film, video, and body art and indeed causally linked to the socially critical and feminist issues connected therewith. The ways in which subject and space, performance and visual image, body and gaze, and femininity and representation relate to each other are characteristic of this linkage.

This exhibition is on view from 23 June to 24 September 2023.