VALIE EXPORT on Body, Language, and Power in Milan Exhibition

VALIE EXPORT, born in Linz in 1940, discusses her exhibition BODY SIGN at Thaddaeus Ropac Milano in Palazzo Belgioioso, curated by Andrea Maurer and Alberto Salvadori in collaboration with Studio VALIE EXPORT and the Ketty La Rocca Estate. The show pairs EXPORT with Italian artist Ketty La Rocca, revealing a conceptual continuity between Vienna and Italy. EXPORT argues the body is the primary site of experience, will, and commerce, rejecting nostalgia for a pre-digital past. She critiques language as a rhizomatic force of power that leaves marks even in silence, and sees art as intervening directly in thought formation, not operating at the margins. On public space, she notes it has become a space of surveillance, with private space also monitored, dissolving the public-private distinction. She invokes Schopenhauer to question technological progress as automatic good. Regarding feminism, she states women are always sexualized first, never treated as neutral persons or sites of thought, and cites Barbara Kruger's 'The body is a battlefield.' The exhibition does not celebrate the body but exposes its vulnerability and critical potency. The article is by Ritamorena Zotti.