The Art of Participation

One of the participating artists in the show "The Art of Participation", presented at the San Francisco MOMA, was Valie Export. She presented a video about a performance realized in 1969 with the title “Tap and Touch Cinema." In this “feminist” performance, the artist uses a metal light box attached to her chest, and in the front of the box was a door, through which you could put your hands and touch her breasts. The principal idea of this performance was to protest against the film industry as something dominated by people in power and used to support “bourgeois ideology.” The artist was trying to recreate the movie theatre, in which the breast of the women, in this case the artist’s body, became the screen. When I saw the video the first time and not knowing who the artist was, I thought it was the work of a male artist, this for the way, in my opinion, they were using the feminine body as an sexual object. When I saw the name of the artist, a really well-known feminist artist I was more confused. I think I need to consider the time this video was created?...
Valei Export is a really important conceptual artist. Since the beginning of her career she has been exploring and using different media like performance, photography, installation, film, and lately, digital photography and video.
Valei Export Has been using the body, more specifically the female body to criticize and question different political and social issues.