Valie Export Is Back In Your Feed: Why This Radical Icon Is Suddenly Everywhere

From cigarette-branded legs to fearless body art, Valie Export is the feminist performance icon TikTok is just rediscovering – and collectors are quietly paying top dollar.

Everyone is suddenly talking about Valie Export – and you're probably wondering: genius feminist icon or just vintage shock value?

This is the artist who turned her own body into a political weapon long before the internet, long before filters, long before "going viral" was even a thing.

If you care about performance, feminism, body politics or just want to understand where today's edgy content really comes from – you can't skip Valie Export.

The Internet is Obsessed: Valie Export on TikTok & Co.

Valie Export's work looks like it was made for the algorithm: raw, direct, confrontational, and incredibly screenshot-friendly.

Think close-up shots of a woman carving lines into her own skin, standing in a harness on the street inviting strangers to touch her chest, or walking around in a box that puts her head in a TV set – it all screams: this could be a viral clip today.

That's why younger creators and art nerds are rediscovering her: Export did performance and body art in the 1960s and 70s that still looks more radical than half the "edgy" content online now.

Want to see the art in action? Check out the hype here:

• Viral Art TikToks for Valie Export
• Watch docs & works on YouTube

On social media, the vibe is a mix of awe and "wait, she did THIS back then?".

You'll see hot takes like: "She walked so performance girls on TikTok could run" and "This is the original body-hacking art".

Others react with shock: "This is too intense", "I can't unsee this", or the classic: "So… is this still art?" – exactly the kind of debate Export always wanted.

Masterpieces & Scandals: What you need to know

Want the must-know pieces so you can actually talk about Valie Export without faking it? Here are the key works that still hit hard today:

• "Tapp und Tastkino" (Tap and Touch Cinema)
  This is the legendary street performance where Export wore a box over her chest and invited strangers to reach in and touch her bare breasts. No camera tricks, no special effects, just raw social experiment. She flipped the usual cinema script: instead of you watching a woman on screen, you suddenly had to confront your own gaze, your own desire, your own awkwardness. Today, clips and reenactments of this piece are instant viral bait because it feels like a live social experiment straight out of TikTok.
• "Aktionshose: Genitalpanik" (Action Pants: Genital Panic)
  Icon status: immortal. Export allegedly stormed into a cinema wearing crotchless trousers and a leather jacket, holding a gun, confronting the audience with a very real, very present female body instead of passive screen images. The resulting black-and-white photos – fierce stare, gun, cut-out pants – have become poster and meme material across the internet. Fashion kids love the look, art kids quote the theory. It's one of those images that keeps coming back on moodboards, Insta feeds and album covers.
• "Körperkonfigurationen" (Body Configurations)
  This photo series shows Export twisting and folding her body against brutalist architecture, stairs and city structures. Her body becomes a ruler, a measuring device, but also a protest sign against rigid social systems. Visually, it's incredibly strong: simple outfit, cold concrete, strange poses that look like contemporary dance meets glitch photography. It's super Instagrammable – and explains a lot about why so many influencers pose against architecture like living sculptures today.

Beyond these, you'll see references to her video works and films, like collaborations with Peter Weibel, and later installations and media art exploring surveillance, technology and the female body.

But if you want three quick conversation-starters, remember: touch cinema, action pants, body configurations. That's your starter pack.

The Price Tag: What is the art worth?

Here's where it gets interesting for collectors and investors: Valie Export is no longer just a cult name in feminist circles – she's firmly in the high-value zone of the market.

Auction databases and market reports show her best works commanding top dollar at international houses. Important vintage photos, major performance-related pieces and museum-level works on paper have sold for strong five-figure and, in select cases, six-figure sums in major auctions.

The trend: early, iconic works linked to her most radical performances are the ones serious collectors hunt for. Those are the pieces that define art history – and the market knows it.

While you won't see her name topping the absolute mega-record lists, she sits comfortably in that elite group of historically crucial, museum-confirmed artists whose prices are seen as relatively stable for the long game.

So what makes her "blue chip" energy?

• Institution love: Her work is in major museum collections and has been shown repeatedly at big-name institutions worldwide. Curators adore her. That's always a strong signal.
• Art history status: She's canon. When people talk about performance art, body art, or feminist art, Export is on the shortlist. That kind of status is market gold.
• Rarity of key works: The defining photos and documents from her most famous actions don't appear on the market every day. When they do, the competition is serious.

In other words: Export isn't a quick-flip "crypto artist of the week" – she's a long-term, historically anchored name. Art advisors regularly flag her as a must-know reference for anyone building a serious collection around performance, media or feminist art.

Her career milestones lock that in:

• She broke through in the late 1960s and 70s with radical body performances that openly attacked sexism and the male gaze at a time when this was way beyond scandal.
• She represented her country at major international exhibitions and has had retrospectives at key museums, cementing her global reach.
• Over the decades, she moved from raw street actions to elaborate video, film and installation works, always circling around identity, media, power and the body.

For you, that means: her name isn't going away. It's already written into the books.

See it Live: Exhibitions & Dates

Want to stand in front of the actual works instead of just scrolling?

Recent years have seen a steady stream of retrospectives, survey shows and thematic exhibitions featuring Export around Europe and beyond, often pairing her with younger artists influenced by her fearless approach.

Right now, exhibition schedules are shifting constantly, and not every institution publishes far ahead. No current dates available can be reliably listed here based on the latest public information, but that doesn't mean nothing is happening.

Your move: check the key sources for up-to-the-minute info.

• Gallery hub: For fresh works, curated selections and professional context, head to her gallery page: Valie Export at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. This is where you get high-res images, texts and news.
• Official info: For more background, upcoming projects and biography details, use the official channels linked through institutional and gallery sites, or search directly for the artist's name plus "official" to find verified sources like museum partners and archives.

Pro tip: many museums are now dropping performance and archival content online. Search for Valie Export in major museum databases and you'll often find full video recordings, photos and texts – basically a free masterclass.

The Verdict: Hype or Legit?

Let's be real: a lot of so-called "shock art" ages badly. Once the scandal is over, nobody cares.

Valie Export is the opposite. Her work doesn't just still feel intense – it feels eerily current in a world obsessed with bodies, exposure, consent, surveillance and the endless pressure to perform online.

When she turned her chest into a private cinema, she was already asking: who controls how women are shown? When she carved lines into her skin or pressed her body against concrete, she was already mapping power, pain and system pressure onto the body – years before "body politics" became a hashtag.

So is this just retro Art Hype, or is it the real deal?

The answer is brutal and simple: this is the source code. If you want to understand why so much art, fashion photography, performance and even social media aesthetics look the way they do now, you have to go back to artists like Valie Export.

For art fans, that means: put her on your Must-See list. If a show pops up near you, go. The images you know from the internet hit completely differently in a darkened video room or blown up on a museum wall.

For collectors, she's not just a "cool name to drop", but a historically loaded, institution-backed artist with strong market recognition and Big Money potential at the upper end of her work.

And for everyone scrolling culture from their phone: next time you see a daring performance or a viral "is this still art?" debate, remember – Valie Export was already there, pushing the limits, long before your feed existed.

@ ad-hoc-news.de