VALIE EXPORT

VALIE EXPORT, Einkreisung, 1976/1980. Courtesy the artist/Thaddaeus Ropac.

An Afterimage homage to VALIE EXPORT:

The body as a sign was for me a tool of negation and affirmation at the same time. In the Body Configurations series for example, I was interested in placing the body in relation to power, to architecture, to the monument. Architecture is a language of power: it speaks through urban space, it shapes us, it conditions us. These works were born precisely from this relationship between body, space, ideology and language.

Nature too is culture. Architecture often comes from natural materials: stone, earth. Where does nature end and civilization begin? The body configurations show how these spaces — urban or natural — shape us, even when we believe we are free. The restrictions we often carry within ourselves.

The relationship with media has always been central to my work. From the very beginning it was clear to me that the subject would become increasingly mediated, technologically extended. Body, politics, technology are inseparable. What we now call biopolitics was already present. My work tries to make this condition visible, to think it critically, to inhabit it without being subjected to it.

- Taken from an interview with EXPORT by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, featured in Il Giornale dell’Arte, 2026