‘As important as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece’

Peaches

I still remember the first time I came across that poster of Valie Export wearing crotchless trousers, her legs spread apart, a gun in her hand. It was a fearless image that took my breath away and is etched in my brain for ever.

Over the years, her work served as an inspiration to my music. Her Tapp-und-Tastkino (Tap and Touch Cinema) performance, where she strapped a miniature theatre to her bare chest and invited passersby to reach through a tiny curtain, felt as important as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. It was up to the spectators how they interacted with her, which could make for painful watching but always felt telling. I’m saddened that she is gone.

Peaches is a Canadian musician and producer

‘The female body is not a polite object’

Florentina Holzinger

I wrote a paper on Valie Export back in high school when I was 14. I have always taken legacy seriously; much of my own work evolves around what has been, and what those histories mean for us today.

It is 1969 when Genital Panic happens. Valie walks into an experimental cinema in Munich wearing crotchless jeans. She moves slowly, row by row, forcing her exposed genitalia to eye-level with the seated audience.

Fast forward to today. We find ourselves in an entirely new landscape: We are drowning in algorithmic thirst traps, free internet porn etc, not to mention the rotting political backlash trying to legislate bodies back into the dark ages. So yes: the core political necessity to subvert how we handle nudity and real bodies endures. In fact, it has become more urgent and complicated than ever.

Thank you, Valie, for paving the way and for articulating this reality with such crystal clarity: the female body is not a polite object. It can be a registered trademark – a weapon to be exported directly against the structures we choose to battle. Rest in peace.

Florentina Holzinger is an Austrian choreographer and theatre director

‘Passionate, brave and certainly generous’

Joan Jonas

Valie Export was a very important artist. In remembering her, certain words come to mind such as bold, radical, innovative, passionate, brave and certainly generous. Her body was central, in confronting architecture by men, for instance, and in general as vehicle for her many interactions. Several works are unforgettable, such as 1968’s Grope and Touch, 1969’s Genital Panic, and 1976’s Encirclement.

Her own words [about Homo Meter II (1976)] explain her position: “When I went out on the street with the loaf of bread tied around me and offered it as a gift people were disturbed, perturbed and curious. They did not dare to cut off a piece with a knife. The loaf of bread was also meant as an extension of the body, a provocation … as an artist I was alone in many ways and especially the confrontation with the public in the public space was something very isolating.”

Joan Jonas is an American artist

‘She made a virtue of civil disobedience’

Candice Breitz

Valie demonstrated to so many of us – with her fierce attitude and badass flair – that it was not necessary to live by the rules of those we could not respect. As a feminist provocateur, she made a virtue of civil disobedience, consistently claiming space that had for far too long been dominated by men. In an intervention staged in 1968, she quite literally put patriarchy on a leash, dragging the legendary curator Peter Weibel through the streets of Vienna on all fours. Her legacy will live on not only in her work, but also through her empowerment of those of us who continue in her footsteps.

Candice Breitz is a South African artist

‘She understood the tools of mainstream media’

Shoair Mavlian

Photography played a central role in Valie Export’s practice. In her iconic Body Configurations series she placed her body in urban public spaces, contorting to the architectural structures of the built environment. She understood the power of engaging with the tools of mainstream media and became one of the first female artists to critically examine representations of women in mass media using photography and film. During her exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in 2024 she commented on her use of photography in relation to feminist practice from the 1960s onwards, saying: “We used the aperture of the film camera in the way to see things with our own eyes, with our own thoughts.” Her radical use of photography as a tool to document, record and question influenced generations of female artists to follow.