Artist Valie Export (b. Linz, Austria, 1940) is known for a body of film, video, performance and installation work focusing on the embodied position of the female artist situated in the contemporary patriarchal dystopia. Emerging from the same post-war context of generational reckoning that spawned Viennese Aktionism, Export’s work eschews the Aktionists’ self-abusing quests for catharsis, creating instead intimately mediated performances, that, while just as confrontational and assertively body-based, present darker critiques of media and representation while exploring the politics of eroticism and presenting subtly bitter attacks on bourgeois consumption and relations.

AVANT – Bodies and Boundaries 2017.09.08 – 2017.09.09
Karlstad, Sweden

The 14th edition of AVANT focus on bodies and boundaries. The body is both our most private territory and a social interface, a boundary that both divides and unites. The point of departure of AVANT is in one of the most legendary artists when it comes to the socio-political dimensions of the body, VALIE EXPORT, followed by Jayne Parker’s early performance-based films.