Exhibition »FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE of the 1970s from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND Collection, Vienna«

The ZKM shows an extensive exhibition with over 400 art works from the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, Vienna, put together by founding director Gabriele Schor. In the 1970s, female artists began to subvert cultural constructions of the female, and in doing so, use their bodies as a projection surface for social codes and their criticism. Using new media such as photography, film and video, and in performances and events, the artists deconstructed the existing restrictive cultural and social conditioning, the mechanisms and automations to suppress women. For the first time in the history of art, female artists took the “representation of women” in visual arts in hand, together, by developing a multitude of self-determined female identities: provocative and radical, poetic and ironic.

The claim of the exhibition at the ZKM is to incorporate the “Feminist Avantgarde“ (Gabriele Schor) into the canon of art history, and highlight the pioneering performance of these female artists. This exhibition is consistent with a specific tradition of the ZKM. Most recently, the ZKM dedicated an extensive retrospective (2014) to the media art pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson, and in 2015 in the scope of the Karlsruhe Festival Frauenperspektiven [Women’s perspectives], presented highlights from the ZKM video collection, including the video works of Ulrike Rosenbach. The virtual exhibition series was entitled Frauen Video Arbeiten [Women Video Working].

The press conference takes place on Thursday, 16th November 2017, 11 am