KVINNE 1970-tallets feministiske avantgarde. Verk fra SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Wien

Female pioneers of a female self-understanding

The goal of the exhibition is to highlight the pioneering achievements of the “Feminist Avant-Garde” and to re-write the canon of art history.  With the help of the new media of the time, such as photography, film and video, as well as their performances and actions, these female artists deconstructed existing cultural and social conditioning, the mechanisms and automatisms of female suppression.

For the first time in art history, female artists began to jointly take “representations of women” into their own hands by creating a large number of self-determined female identities. In their works, they ask radically new questions of society, the art scene and the role of the woman. The rejection of ideas that correspond to traditional norms is the common tie between the female artists of this generation. Against the backdrop of the events of 1968, the feminist movement left its tracks with the slogan “The private is political”, which challenged the one-dimensional roles of women as mother, housewife and wife.

The female artists reveal patriarchal ideas of how a woman should lead her life and how she must look as social constructs. Astonishingly, some female artists chose strategies that were formally similar to each other, although they did not know the works of the others.

Photos: © Oddbjørn Erland Aarstad / Art Museum Stavanger