I thought: this is not my life, being married and a mother.
In Vienna, on a Thursday in May, the world lost Valie Export — a woman who spent five decades refusing to be looked at on anyone else's terms. Born Waltraud Lehner in 1940, she remade herself by name and by practice, turning her own body into a site of philosophical confrontation with patriarchal power. Her art did not ask permission, and it did not offer comfort; it asked viewers to reckon with what they had always taken for granted. The questions she posed in the streets of 1960s Vienna have outlasted her, still unanswered.
- At 85, Valie Export died in Vienna — three days before her 86th birthday — leaving behind a body of work that once scandalized a nation and now anchors the feminist art canon.
- Her 1968 street performance, in which she invited strangers to touch her bare chest through a miniature curtain, was not provocation for its own sake — it was a precise reversal of the male gaze, making the viewer the subject of scrutiny.
- The personal cost of her defiance was steep: she lost custody of her daughter after a pornography conviction, and she had already walked away from marriage and motherhood at twenty, a choice almost unthinkable for women of her generation.
- She built her own name — literally — borrowing from a cigarette brand to refuse the names of her father and ex-husband, and built her career across film, performance, and academia on that same self-determined foundation.
- Her legacy is now held in institutions, re-enacted by artists like Marina Abramović, and studied across generations — but her gallerist's words carry the weight of the moment: the loss is of a singular perspective, and the work remains urgently unfinished.
Valie Export died in Vienna on a Thursday in May, three days before her 86th birthday. Her foundation announced her passing that evening. For five decades, she made art that was scandalous, brilliant, and impossible to ignore — work that forced viewers to confront their own role in the objectification of women's bodies.
She is remembered most vividly for Tapp und Tastkino — Tap and Touch Cinema — a 1968 performance in which she strapped a miniature theatre stage to her chest and stood on a Vienna street, inviting passersby to reach through a curtain and touch her bare breasts. The piece was outrageous by design, but also perfectly calibrated: by inviting touch, Export reversed the usual dynamic of the male gaze. The viewer became implicated. Twelve years later, at the 1980 Venice Biennale, she presented Birth Bed — a monumental female abdomen with red neon streaming from between splayed legs, and a television broadcasting a Catholic mass where the head should have been. It laid bare, quite literally, the machinery of patriarchal control over reproduction.
She was born Waltraud Lehner in 1940 in Linz. She married young, had a daughter before she turned twenty, and then made a choice almost unthinkable for women of her generation: she decided the life she was living was not hers. She divorced, arranged for her daughter to stay with her sister, and moved to Vienna to study. The cost was real — in 1970, a judge temporarily stripped her of custody after a pornography conviction tied to her co-editorship of a book on Viennese Actionist art. She had already chosen her alias by then: Valie from a childhood nickname, Export borrowed from a cigarette brand. She would not carry her father's name or her ex-husband's. She would carry one she had invented.
Her career spanned mediums and decades. She co-founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative in 1968, exhibited at documenta twice, and had a feature film nominated for the Golden Bear at Berlin in 1985. She taught in Cologne for a decade, and in 2015 her hometown of Linz opened a centre dedicated to her legacy in a former tobacco factory. In 2005, Marina Abramović re-enacted one of Export's most confrontational pieces at the Guggenheim, introducing her work to a generation that had not lived through the original shock. Her gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac called her one of the most visionary feminist artists to emerge in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. The work remains urgent. The questions it asks have not been answered.
Valie Export died in Vienna on Thursday, three days shy of her 86th birthday. Her foundation made the announcement that evening. She was an Austrian performance artist and filmmaker who spent five decades making work that was, by turns, scandalous, brilliant, and impossible to ignore—art that forced viewers to confront their own complicity in the objectification of women's bodies.
She is remembered most vividly for a piece called Tapp und Tastkino, which translates as Tap and Touch Cinema. In 1968, Export strapped a miniature theatre stage to her chest and positioned herself on a Vienna street. She invited passersby to reach through a small curtain and touch her bare breasts. Her collaborator Peter Weibel stood nearby with a megaphone, summoning people forward, and a stopwatch to mark each encounter. The piece was outrageous by design. It was also perfectly calibrated: by inviting touch, Export reversed the usual dynamic of the male gaze. The viewer became implicated. The viewer became the subject of scrutiny.
Twelve years later, at the 1980 Venice Biennale, Export presented Geburtenbett—Birth Bed. The centrepiece was an enormous female abdomen, legs splayed at unnatural angles, lying on a mattress. Red neon light streamed from between the legs. Where the head should have been, a television broadcast a Catholic mass. The work was grotesque and anatomical and political all at once. It laid bare, quite literally, the machinery of patriarchal control over women's bodies and reproduction.
Export was born Waltraud Lehner in 1940 in Linz. She attended a convent school as a child but left at fourteen to study at the local School of Arts and Crafts. She married young, had a daughter before she turned twenty, and then made a choice that would have been unthinkable for most women of her generation: she decided the life she was living was not hers. She divorced. She arranged for her daughter to stay with her sister. She moved to Vienna to study. In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, she was direct about it: "I thought: this is not my life, being married and a mother."
The cost was real. In 1970, a judge temporarily stripped her of custody rights after she was convicted on pornography charges related to her co-editorship of a book about Viennese Actionist art. She had already chosen her stage name by then—Valie, from a childhood nickname, and Export, borrowed from a cigarette brand. The alias was deliberate. She would not be known by her father's name or her ex-husband's name. She would be known by a name she had invented.
Export's career unfolded across multiple mediums. She co-founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative in 1968. She exhibited at documenta in Kassel in 1977 and again in 2007. Her feature film The Practice of Love, about a journalist investigating peep shows in Hamburg's red light district, was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 1985 Berlin Film Festival. She taught at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne from 1995 to 2005. In 2015, her hometown of Linz opened a centre dedicated to her work and legacy, housed in a former tobacco factory.
Her influence extended far beyond Austria. In 2005, the performance artist Marina Abramović re-enacted one of Export's most confrontational pieces, Genital Panic, as part of a show at the Guggenheim in New York called Seven Easy Pieces—a retrospective of seven key performances of the twentieth century. That single act of recognition introduced Export's work to a generation that had not lived through the shock of the original performances. Her gallerist Thaddaeus Ropac said of her death: "Valie was one of the most visionary feminist artists to emerge in Europe in the second half of the 20th century. Her passing marks the loss of a singular perspective in contemporary art, one that influenced artists across generations." The work remains urgent. The questions it asks have not been answered.
Notable Quotes
Valie was one of the most visionary feminist artists to emerge in Europe in the second half of the 20th century. Her passing marks the loss of a singular perspective in contemporary art, one that influenced artists across generations.— Thaddaeus Ropac, her gallerist
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does a piece from 1968 still matter so much? It's been more than fifty years.
Because the structures it exposed—the way women's bodies are looked at, controlled, made into objects—those structures are still there. Export didn't just make art about objectification. She made you participate in it, made you feel the discomfort of it. That's harder to ignore than a painting.
The piece with the theatre on her chest—that sounds almost like a joke.
It is a joke. It's also a trap. You think you're being invited to do something transgressive, something fun. And then you realize what you're actually doing, and what it means. That's the work.
She gave up custody of her daughter to pursue her art. That's a hard choice.
It was. But she was clear about it. She didn't want the life that was expected of her. She wanted to make work that mattered. The cost was real, but so was the choice.
What made her different from other feminist artists of that era?
The directness. The refusal to be polite about it. She didn't make subtle work. She made work that made people uncomfortable in their bodies, in their desires, in their assumptions about what they were allowed to do and see.
And now she's remembered as a visionary.
Yes. But that recognition took time. The work that scandalized Austria in the sixties had to be recontextualized, had to be shown again by artists like Abramović, before institutions caught up to what Export had already understood.