DONNA: FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE OF THE 1970s
from Sammlung Verbund, Vienna
19 February – 16 May 2010
Exhibition at the
Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna, Rome
Viale delle Belle Arti, 131
00196 Roma
Italy
The director of the collection, Gabriele Schor, has taken the initiative and deliberately designated the feminist art movement of the 1970s as Feminist Avant-Garde, in order to emphasise its trailblazing role, as it is, like no other art movement in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a decisive force in shaping contemporary art production. The Feminist Avant-Garde is still an open field and many artists and their works are yet to be discovered. Besides works of Ketty La Rocca, Hannah Wilke, Eleanor Antin, VALIE EXPORT, Ana Mendieta, Martha Rosler and Francesca Woodman, the scarcely known early photographs of Cindy Sherman are still to be unearthed. Furthermore, the works by Birgit Jürgenssen, Renate Bertlmann, Annegret Soltau and Nil Yalter are to be seen in Italy for the first time. Thus, in showing a number of relatively unkown positions and groups of works, DONNA: FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE OF THE 1970s claims to redefine and expand the coordinates of the feminist art movement.
Art history clearly shows: the image of woman is a man’s image of woman. This iconography, handed down for centuries, has been radically deconstructed by the Feminist Avant-Garde in the 1970s for the first time. In their work these 17 artists create a new image of women. These works often discuss their own body as well as themselves in their object-subject relations and fathoms the prospect of self-determined feminine identities.
The exhibition provides a glimpse of the multi-layered works of artists, who deal with constructions of identity in a provocative, poetic and ironic way. In accordance with its equally strong commitment to academic publications, the Sammlung Verbund has published a comprehensive monograph of Birgit Jürgenssen’s work in 2009, and is currently working on the Catalogue Raisonné of Cindy Sherman’s early works in close cooperation with the artist.
Artists:
Helena Almeida, Eleanor Antin, Renate Bertlmann, VALIE EXPORT, Birgit Jürgenssen, Suzy Lake, Ana Mendieta, Ketty La Rocca, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Annegret Soltau, Martha Wilson, Hannah Wilke, Francesca Woodman, Nil Yalter.
Location:
Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna, Rom
Viale delle Belle Arti, 131
00196 Roma, Italy
Duration of Exhibition:
19.2. – 16.5.2010, Tuesday – Sunday from 8.30 to 19.30, closed Mondays
Curators:
Gabriele Schor, Director & Chief Curator Sammlung Verbund
Angelandreina Rorro, Curator Contemporary Art,
Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna
Catalogue:
Electa (Italien/English)
Sammlung Verbund was established in 2004 by Verbund, Austria’s biggest electricity company and one of the leading hydro-electric power producers in Europe. It is a corporate collection with a contemporary, international orientation.
The collection’s maxim is “depth before breadth”. Its focus is on complete groups of works, such as the early work of Cindy Sherman and of the Feminist Avant-Garde (Francesca Woodman, Eleanor Antin, Hannah Wilke, Birgit Jürgenssen, Renate Bertlmann, Valie Export, Ana Mendieta and others) as well as works on the theme of spaces/locations (including Gordon Matta-Clark, Fred Sandback, Jeff Wall, Loan Nguyen, Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler). In relation to this, Olafur Eliasson opened his first public space intervention in Vienna in 2008. Every day at dusk Yellow Fog by Olafur Eliasson ascends along the facade of the Verbund headquarters, transforming the building and the square into a stage of fog, light and wind.
