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Valie Export «Venus and Mars»
Valie Export, «Venus and Mars», 1976
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 Valie Export
«Venus and Mars»

In similar fashion to her video work with historical superimpositions, Valie Export uses a collage of self-portrait and a famous art-historical model – in this case, Botticelli’s ‘Venus and Mars’, 1483 – to investigate what she calls the historical ‘archive of body postures’. Through her identification with an idealized female figure in a mythological painting, the unchanging portrayal of woman through the ages is abruptly called into question.