Waltraud Lehner adopted the name Valie Export in 1967, deriving the moniker from a cigarette brand to distance herself from patriarchal naming conventions. Born in 1940 in Linz, she emerged as a seminal Austrian conceptual artist whose transgressive practice spanned photography, sculpture, film, and media art, fundamentally challenging the representation of women within postwar European culture.
Artistic Identity and Early Performance
Export trained in painting, drawing, and design at the National School for Textile Industry in Vienna. Her work often engaged with the aesthetic of Viennese Actionism, though she focused explicitly on feminist critiques of gendered power dynamics. Her performance Aktionshose:Genitalpanik in 1968 involved walking through a cinema wearing crotchless trousers to confront audiences directly with the female body. Her piece Tapp-und-Tast-Kino, performed between 1968 and 1971, featured a portable styrofoam or aluminum structure on her chest that allowed passersby to touch her breasts, subverting the voyeuristic nature of traditional cinema through tactile contact.
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Beyond physical performance, Export utilized television and video to deconstruct domestic and social norms. In 1971, she produced Facing a Family, a video intervention broadcast on the program Kontakte that captured a bourgeois family watching television, effectively mirroring the audience's own domestic experience. In 1972, she published Women’s Art: A Manifesto, arguing for the necessity of female self-definition through artistic practice to challenge male-dominated cultural signs and social functions.
Later Career and Recognition
Export’s later work included complex explorations of the body in space, such as the 1970 photo piece Body Sign Action and film works like Invisible Adversaries and The Practice of Love. She served as a professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and remained active in the artist group MAERZ. Her contributions were formally recognized with the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts in 1990 and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2005. She died in Vienna in 2026.
Fast facts
- Born: 1940, Linz
- Died: 2026, Vienna
- Citizenship: Austria
- Education: National School for Textile Industry
- Key Movement: Viennese Actionism
- Academic Role: Academy of Media Arts Cologne
- Notable Recognition: Great Golden Medal of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
Questions readers ask
Why did she change her name to Valie Export?
She wanted to reject the names of her father and former husband, choosing a brand name to symbolize a gesture of self-determination and the act of exporting herself.
What was the purpose of the Tap and Touch Cinema performance?
It was designed to invert the sight-dependent nature of film, forcing participants to engage in physical touch rather than visual consumption, thereby challenging how media objects and sexualizes the female body.
Achievements
- City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts — 1990
- Great Golden Medal of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
- Notable work: VALIE EXPORT SMART EXPORT
- Notable work: The Practice of Love
- Notable work: Invisible Adversaries
- Notable work: Aspects of Feminist Actionism
- Movement: new media art and feminist art
