Exhibition
The exhibition took place from 12 December 2018 to 24 February 2019.
The VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna, was hosted in the Dům umění města Brna / The Brno House of Arts, Brno, from 12 December 2018 to 24 February 2019.
With over 200 artworks from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna, the Haus der Kunst in Brno shows how female artists in the 1970s began to subvert cultural constructs of the feminine and in doing so to use their body as a surface on which to project social codes and their criticism. The goal of the exhibition is to highlight the pioneering achievements of the “Feminist Avant-Garde”, a term coined by Gabriele Schor, the founding director of the VERBUND COLLECTION, and to re-write the canon of art history.
Curator:
Curated by Gabriele Schor, founding director of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna
Exhibition team
Theresa Dann, curatorial assistant of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna
Julia Hürner, curatorial assistant of the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna
Anna Saavedra, press and PR work at Dům umění města Brna
Jana Vránová, curator of Dům umění města Brna
A-F
Helena Almeida | Emma Amos | Sonia Andrade | Eleanor Antin | Anneke Barger | Lynda Benglis | Judith Bernstein | Renate Bertlmann | Dara Birnbaum | Teresa Burga | Marcella Campagnano | Judy Chicago | Linda Christanell | Lili Dujourie | Mary Beth Edelson | Renate Eisenegger | VALIE EXPORT | Gerda Fassel | Esther Ferrer
G-O
Margaret Harrison | Lynn Hershman Leeson | Alexis Hunter | Mako Idemitsu | Sanja Iveković | Birgit Jürgenssen | Kirsten Justesen | Auguste Kronheim | Ketty La Rocca | Leslie Labowitz | Suzanne Lacy | Suzy Lake | Katalin Ladik | Brigitte Lang | Natalia LL | Lea Lublin | Karin Mack | Ana Mendieta | Rita Myers | Lorraine O’Grady | ORLAN
P-Z
Florentina Pakosta | Gina Pane | Letícia Parente | Ewa Partum | Friederike Pezold | Margot Pilz | Howardena Pindell | Ulrike Rosenbach | Martha Rosler | Suzanne Santoro | Carolee Schneemann | Lydia Schouten | Elaine Shemilt | Cindy Sherman | Penny Slinger | Annegret Soltau | Betty Tompkins | Regina Vater | Hannah Wilke | Martha Wilson | Francesca Woodman | Nil Yalter
The exhibition took place from 12 December 2018 to 24 February 2019.
published by Gabriele Schor
Hardcover: 559 pages
Publisher: Prestel Verlag
Edition: 2016
Language: German
ISBN-10: 3791356275
ISBN-13: 978-3791356273
Using new media such as photography, film and video, as well as in performances and actions, the female artists deconstructed existing restrictive cultural and social conditioning, the mechanisms and automatisms of female suppression. For the first time in the history of art, female artists jointly took the “representation of the woman” in the visual arts into their own hands by developing a large number of female identities with self-determination. In their works, they ask radically new questions of society, the art establishment and the roles of the woman. The rejection of traditional, normative concepts connects the commitment of the female artists of this generation. Against the backdrop of the 1968 movement, the women’s movement coined the slogan “The personal is political”. The one-dimensional role assignment as mother, housewife and wife was therefore questioned radically and ironically.
The exhibition is arranged into five areas: the reduction to the roles of mother, housewife and wife; role-plays as masquerade and parody; the visualisation of the feeling of being locked in and breaking out; female sexuality versus objectification, and the diktat of beauty. The female artists debunk patriarchal ideas about how a woman should live and be as a social construct. What is amazing here is that some female artists selected formally similar strategies, although they did not know each other’s works.
FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE of the 1970s from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna, unites 62 female artists from Europe, North and South America and Asia who were born between 1929 and 1955.
Photos: © Michaela Dvořáková / Brno House of Arts