A Feminist Avant-Garde

Photographs and Performances of the 1970s from the Verbund Collection, Vienna

Exhibition: 4 Jul 2022 – 25 Sep 2022

A Feminist Avant-Garde
Francesca Woodman, Face, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1976, Courtesy The Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Right Society (ARS), Bildrecht / Verbund Collection, Vienna

The Rencontres d’Arles is delighted to present, for the first time in France, the exhibition A Feminist Avant-Garde. Photographs and Performances of the 1970s from the Verbund Collection, Vienna, with over 200 works by 71 female artists.

The exhibition title refers to "an" Avant-Garde, one containing a multitude of feminist movements, diverse in age, nationality, and culture. Feminisms are also considered in intersectional terms because some of those female artists have experienced, and continue to experience, multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, classism, and gender. The exhibition is divided into five themes: women’s reduction to "wife, mother, and housewife"; their resulting feeling of "being locked-up"; the questioning of "dictates of beauty and representations of female bodies"; explorations of "female sexuality"; and debates around "female roles and identities."

Artists

Works

  • Birgit Jürgenssen, Ohne Titel (Selbst mit Fellchen) (Untitled (Self with Fur), 1974, Courtesy Birgit Jürgenssen / Galerie Hubert Winter, Bildrecht / Verbund Collection, Vienna
  • VALIE EXPORT, Die Geburtenmadonna (The Birth Madonna), 1976, Courtesy VALIE EXPORT / Gallery Thaddaeus Ropac, Bildrecht / Verbund Collection, Vienna
  • Ana Mendieta, Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints), 1972, Courtesy The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC / Galerie Lelong, Verbund Collection, Vienna