05/15/2026
VALIE EXPORT (1940-2026)
VALIE EXPORT was one of Austria's most prominent artists of the postwar avant garde. Over seven decades, she experimented with video, expanded cinema, conceptual photography, persona performances, computer works, laser installations, drawings, and objects and published extensively on contemporary art.
Born in Linz, Austria, in 1940, she moved to Vienna in 1960 and quickly made contact with the group of artists known as the Viennese Actionists. In 1967, she coined the name VALIE EXPORT--written in capital letters--as her artistic concept and logo, inspired in part by the package for Smart Export ci******es. She gave up her given name (her father's name) to render a new name synonymous with radical self-determination.
EXPORT was interested in how bodies--primarily those of women--are shaped by external factors, such as language, technology, and the media, so as to create inner states or conditions. Often working in public spaces, she used her body as a medium for the exploration of social reality.
EXPORT's work was featured in two major exhibitions at MOCA, "Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object, 1949-1979" (1998) and "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution" (2007).
Her 1968 work "Identity Transfer 1-3" is included in MOCA's collection. The triptych shows the artist mugging for the camera in a wig, zippered jacket, and gold jewelry, subtly modulating her poses, facial expressions, and clothing styling. This work explores how photography transfers or transforms complex self-identity into a static image, deconstructing the ways that make-up, jewelry, hair, clothes, stance, and other culturally defined gender codes, or signs, denote feminine identity. EXPORT understood the significant role that visual media like photography, television, cinema, painting, and sculpture have historically played in representing a repressive, sexist image of women. However, EXPORT saw these same media as potential tools for women’s social advancement. She argued that art can and should be a medium for women to develop a new image of themselves, as defined for and by themselves.
Image credit: VALIE EXPORT, "Identity Transfer 1–3," (1968). Black and white photographs. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Purchase with funds provided by the Photography Committee.
