An image has been created to suggest things have changed [for women in the art world] but really they haven’t. It’s just an image…

There is a certain community of male collectors who solely support male artists. These circles strive to perpetuate the male power structures. There is very little support in male structures toward female artists unless maybe someone thinks that the prices might go up in the future. It’s often in the future with female artists, while for the male artists it’s often already interesting in the present. With female artists it’s a speculation. Maybe it will “go up” in the future. — Valie Export

VALIE EXPORT—THE 1980 VENICE BIENNALE WORKS is a re-installation of the works the artist presented at the 39th Venice Biennale—originally shown with work by Maria Lassnig in the Austrian Pavilion—which “embodies the fierce and fearless interrogation of oppressive power structures and hierarchical systems of control at the heart of the artist’s practice, [employing] a combination of investigative photography, sculpture, and novel image-making techniques, challenging audiences by examining the politics of the body, eroticism, the male gaze, and liberation.”*

VALIE EXPORT—THE 1980 VENICE BIENNALE WORKS*

Through January 25.

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac

Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London.

Valie Export, from top: Geburtenbett, 1980; Valie Export—The 1980 Venice Biennale Works, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, November 28, 2019–January 25, 2020, installation views (2); Die Geburtenmadonna, 1976) (after Michelangelo Buonarroti’s Pietà, Madonna della Febre, 1498-99); Einkreisung (1976). Photographs by Ben Westoby, images courtesy and © the artist, the photographer, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.