Female Sensibility
Feminist Avant-Garde from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND
With a line-up of more than two hundred works of art from the Viennese SAMMLUNG VERBUND, the Lentos Kunstmuseum shows how eighty-two female artists put question marks in the 1970s against the construct of the female.
The exhibition extols the pioneering achievement of the “Feminist Avant-Garde”, a term coined by founding director of the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Gabriele Schor, to enlarge the artistic canon. For the first time in the history of art, artists in different continents jointly focussed on the suppression of women. For this purpose, they used their own bodies as a social sign. They critiqued their reduction to the roles of mother, housewife and spouse; they made visual statements regarding such topics as claustro-phobic environments, female sexuality, and the pressure to be beautiful, and revealed the huge number of female identities. It is most remarkable that these artists developed strategies that are similar in formal terms, even though they were not aware of each other. Keeping their distance from male dominated painting, they chose such media as photography, film, and performance, which are historically less “biased” by comparison. Following the motto that “the personal is political”, these artists reflected on traditional social expectations that women are supposed to meet and countered them with a great deal of irony.
In addition to famous artists and works of art, the Lentos also has less well-known ones in store that are worth discovering. The eighty-two international artists include seventeen from Austria.
Curator: Gabriele Schor
Exhibtion design: Klemen Breitfuss
Artists
Helena Almeida, Emma Amos, Sonia Andrade, Eleanor Antin, Anneke Barger, Lynda Benglis, Judith Bernstein, Renate Bertlmann, Tomaso Binga, Dara Birnbaum, Teresa Burga, Marcella Campagnano, Elizabeth Catlett, Judy Chicago, Linda Christanell, Veronika Dreier, Orshi Drozdik, Lili Dujourie, Mary Beth Edelson, Renate Eisenegger, Rose English, VALIE EXPORT, Gerda Fassel, Esther Ferrer, Marisa González, Eulàlia Grau, Barbara Hammer, Margaret Harrison, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Alexis Hunter, Mako Idemitsu, Sanja Iveković, Anne Marie Jehle, Birgit Jürgenssen, Kirsten Justesen, Auguste Kronheim, Ketty La Rocca, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, Katalin Ladik, Suzy Lake, Brigitte Lang, Natalia LL, Lea Lublin, Karin Mack, Dindga McCannon, Ana Mendieta, Annette Messager, Anita Münz, Rita Myers, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, ORLAN, Florentina Pakosta, Gina Pane, Letícia Parente, Ewa Partum, Friederike Pezold, Margot Pilz, Howardena Pindell, Ingeborg G. Pluhar, Lotte Profohs, Angels Ribé, Ulrike Rosenbach, Martha Rosler, Brigitte Aloise Roth, Suzanne Santoro, Carolee Schneemann, Lydia Schouten, Elaine Shemilt, Cindy Sherman, Penny Slinger, Annegret Soltau, Anita Steckel, Gabriele Stötzer, Betty Tompkins, Regina Vater, Marianne Wex, Hannah Wilke, Martha Wilson, Francesca Woodman, Nil Yalter