WOMAN. FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE of the 1970s. Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna

Emancipation in the 1970s

Many female artists emancipated themselves from the role of muse and model in the 1970s, i.e. they emancipated themselves from their status of object towards being a self-determined subject that actively participates in social and political processes. Against the backdrop of the 1968 movement, the women’s movement coined the slogan “The personal is political”. The one-dimensional role assignment as mother, housewife and wife was therefore questioned radically and ironically. The exhibition is arranged into four areas: the reduction to mother, housewife and wife; role-plays as masquerade and parody; female sexuality versus objectification, and the diktat of beauty. The female artists debunk patriarchal ideas about how a woman should live and be as a social construct. In contrast to the male-dominated field of painting, many female artists in the 1970s opted for historically unaffected media such as photography, video, film and presented performances and actions. What is amazing here is that some female artists selected formally similar strategies, although they did not know each other’s works. 

The exhibition is not an exhibition about women but an exhibition about topics. It combines 48 female artists from the VERBUND COLLECTION who were born between 1930 and 1958. Amongst the European, North and South American female artists, eight of them are from Austria.

Photos: © Lisa Rastl / mumok, Vienna