Tributes from artists, musicians and curators following the death of Valie Export have highlighted her lasting influence on feminist art, performance practice and the political use of the body in public space.

Export, whose confrontational performances and photographic works helped redefine feminist avant-garde art in Europe from the late 1960s onward, was remembered this week by figures across contemporary art, music and theatre.

Many cited her willingness to challenge conventions surrounding nudity, spectatorship and gendered power structures.Canadian musician Peaches described one of Export’s most recognisable images — showing the artist in crotchless trousers holding a gun as permanently fixed in her memory.

Peaches said the photograph represented a fearless artistic gesture that continued to resonate decades after it was created.She also compared Export’s 1968 performance Tapp-und-Tastkino to Cut Piece by Yoko Ono. In the performance, Export wore a box resembling a miniature cinema over her bare chest and invited members of the public to place their hands inside through curtained openings.

Peaches said the work forced audiences to confront their own role in systems of looking, touch and power.Austrian choreographer and theatre director Florentina Holzinger said Export’s 1969 performance Genital Panic remained politically relevant in a digital era shaped by social media imagery and debates over bodily autonomy.

In the work, Export entered an experimental cinema in Munich wearing crotchless jeans and moved among seated audience members, confronting viewers directly with her exposed body. Holzinger said the performance challenged assumptions about how women’s bodies are viewed and regulated in public space.

She argued that Export’s work remained urgent amid contemporary political disputes surrounding gender, sexuality and censorship.“The female body is not a polite object,” Holzinger wrote in tribute. She described Export’s practice as a form of resistance directed against structures of social control and patriarchal power.

American artist Joan Jonas described Export as “bold, radical, innovative” and said her body-centred performances fundamentally altered how artists engaged with architecture, spectatorship and public confrontation.Jonas highlighted several key works from Export’s career, including Tapp-und-Tastkino, Genital Panic and Encirclement.

She also referenced Export’s reflections on Homo Meter II, in which the artist carried bread attached to her body in public spaces. Export described the work as an extension of the body and said audiences often reacted with uncertainty or discomfort.Jonas noted that Export frequently described the isolation involved in confronting audiences directly in public environments during the early years of feminist performance art.

South African artist Candice Breitz said Export demonstrated that artists did not need to conform to systems they opposed. Breitz characterised Export as a “feminist provocateur” whose work reclaimed public and institutional space historically dominated by men.

Breitz referred to a 1968 intervention in which Export led Austrian artist and curator Peter Weibel through the streets of Vienna on a leash. The performance has frequently been interpreted as a symbolic inversion of patriarchal authority and gender hierarchy within the European art world of the period.

Curator Shoair Mavlian emphasised Export’s importance to feminist photography and media criticism. Mavlian said photography was central to Export’s practice, particularly in the Body Configurations series, where the artist positioned her body against urban architecture in distorted or restrictive poses.

According to Mavlian, Export was among the first women artists to critically examine representations of women through photography and film while simultaneously using those media as tools of resistance. She referenced comments Export made during a 2024 exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery, where the artist said feminist practitioners of the 1960s used the film camera “to see things with our own eyes, with our own thoughts.”

Export emerged in Austria during a period of growing experimental and political art movements in Europe. Her work combined performance, photography, film and conceptual art, frequently centring the body as a site of political struggle and social critique. Many of her best-known works challenged the passive representation of women in cinema, advertising and visual culture.

Her influence extended across generations of feminist artists, performers and theorists, particularly those examining surveillance, spectatorship, bodily autonomy and media representation. Scholars have frequently situated Export alongside artists such as Yoko Ono and other pioneers of postwar feminist performance art whose work reshaped institutional understandings of authorship, gender and participation.

The renewed attention following Export’s death has also prompted broader reflection on the legacy of radical feminist art movements that emerged in Europe and North America during the late 1960s and 1970s, many of which directly challenged prevailing attitudes toward sexuality, censorship and the visibility of women’s bodies.

Export’s works continue to be exhibited internationally and remain central to discussions of feminist conceptual art, experimental cinema and performance history.

French actor Juliette Binoche has built an international career over four decades working with some of world cinema’s most prominent directors, but the Oscar-winning performer says her first experience directing a feature documentary required her to abandon certainty, reputation and control.

Her directorial debut, In-I In Motion, premiered in New York at the Museum of Modern Art and revisits the physically and emotionally demanding dance collaboration she created with British choreographer Akram Khan in the late 2000s. Constructed from rehearsal footage filmed over several months, the documentary chronicles Binoche’s immersion into contemporary dance and the personal experiences that informed the project’s exploration of intimacy, fear and emotional dependence.

Ahead of the screening, Binoche acknowledged uncertainty over how audiences would respond to the film’s fragmented and non-linear structure.“This film isn’t going to hold your hand,” she said while discussing how to introduce the documentary to viewers.The project marks a significant departure from the screen performances that established Binoche as one of Europe’s most acclaimed actors.

After early recognition in Hail Mary, she achieved international prominence through films including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The English Patient and Chocolat. Her later collaborations with directors such as Michael Haneke and Abbas Kiarostami reinforced her standing within international arthouse cinema.In In-I In Motion, however, Binoche appears outside the polished framework typically associated with established screen actors.

The documentary follows six months of rehearsals involving improvisation, physical exhaustion and repeated movement exercises designed to strip away performance habits and emotional restraint.“I wanted the audience to experience what it feels like to be in a process of creation,” Binoche said. “That’s not a red carpet. It’s searching.”She described the experience of working in an unfamiliar discipline as central to the project’s meaning.“Being a beginner meant to not know,” she said.

“It’s about orienting into a truth within you. It’s not about being confident, it’s about allowing yourself to be nothing.”The original stage production, In-I, premiered in London in 2007 and later toured internationally for more than 100 performances. The piece combined dance, theatre and spoken dialogue to depict the emotional trajectory of a relationship, moving from attraction and tenderness to conflict and separation.

Binoche and Khan developed the work through extended conversations with acting coach Susan Batson and improvisational exercises led by movement director Su-Man Hsu. The resulting performances incorporated themes of attachment, dependence and emotional violence.At the centre of the documentary is a sequence inspired by a violent assault Binoche experienced as a teenager.

During one climactic scene, staged against a blood-red installation created by artist Anish Kapoor, Binoche reenacts strangulation while suspended above the stage.The sequence drew from memories of a mugging she experienced as a young girl in Paris.“It became a big fight, and I was strangled,” Binoche said. “I said to him: ‘Go ahead, do it.’ And then he stopped because I said that.”Binoche rejected the suggestion that revisiting the attack was uniquely traumatic, instead linking her experience to broader patterns of violence affecting women.

“A lot of people go through it,” she said. “In France, the percentage of women who go through violence like this is huge.”The documentary was assembled from nearly 200 hours of rehearsal footage recorded by filmmaker Marion Stalens, Binoche’s sister. Binoche said the idea of turning the material into a film had existed for years, encouraged in part by late actor and director Robert Redford after he attended a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008.

“He repeated it several times,” Binoche said of Redford’s encouragement to adapt the performance for film.The project eventually moved forward after producers approached her several years ago asking whether she had a film she wanted to direct.Despite years spent working alongside major filmmakers, Binoche said she never previously felt urgency to direct because she already considered herself deeply involved in the creative process as an actor.

“As an actor, you’re so involved in the directing because you’re in the middle of it,” she said.Rather than imitating techniques from directors she worked with, Binoche said she absorbed a broader commitment to instinct and intuition. Over her career she has collaborated with filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax, whose 1986 film Mauvais Sang became one of her breakthrough performances.

“What I learned from most directors is that they follow their intuition,” she said.Binoche said the pursuit of artistic growth requires abandoning attachment to public image or professional status.“If you’re attached to status, I think you’re losing possible opportunities for art,” she said.The actor’s directorial debut arrives during a period of heightened visibility beyond acting roles. In 2025, Binoche served as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, where Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi received the Palme d’Or for It Was Just An Accident.

During the festival, Binoche faced criticism after declining to answer questions about a public letter concerning Gaza and the film industry. Later that evening, she delivered a tribute during the opening ceremony to Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, whose life was the subject of a documentary screening at the festival.“They didn’t know what I was going to do in the evening,” Binoche said, reflecting on the controversy.

“I had a plan.”Binoche said the projects she continues to pursue are driven primarily by stories involving personal change and emotional transformation.“What I like in choosing a story, a script or a play is when there’s transformation,” she said. “Because I think we can transform.”

The 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale has opened with a mix of controversy, political debate and large-scale experimental installations, as artists across Venice use performance, sound, sculpture and archival work to address themes ranging from war and surveillance to technology and public memory.

Spread across the Giardini, Arsenale and dozens of satellite venues, this year’s biennale has drawn attention not only for its official exhibitions but also for the reactions they have provoked from governments, visitors and even local police.Among the most discussed works is the Austrian pavilion by Florentina Holzinger, whose immersive performance installation transformed the national pavilion into a chaotic post-apocalyptic environment.

The performance opened with Holzinger suspended upside down from the clappers of a large bell while performers moved through the space naked. One woman repeatedly drove a speedboat in circles inside the pavilion, while others balanced high above visitors or remained submerged in water tanks.The installation also incorporated functioning toilets connected to a filtration system intended to purify visitors’ urine and redirect it into a large water tank.

Nearby sections of the exhibition appeared deliberately engineered to resemble flooding or sewage failure, creating an atmosphere of collapse and instability. During one viewing, police officers entered the pavilion to question the nature of the performance after complaints or confusion from attendees.

The Austrian pavilion quickly became one of the central talking points of the biennale’s opening week, reinforcing Holzinger’s reputation for physically extreme and confrontational live art.Elsewhere in Venice, painter Sanya Kantarovsky presented “Basic Failure” inside the historic Palazzo Loredan.

Kantarovsky, born in Moscow before emigrating to the United States as a child, filled the palazzo’s ornate interiors with psychologically tense paintings that resemble still frames from unresolved narratives.

The exhibition pairs unsettling domestic imagery with the grandeur of Venetian interiors lined with books and Murano glass chandeliers. The show culminates in a detailed Murano glass sculpture of a young boy’s head, creating what visitors described as a dialogue between contemporary anxiety and historical opulence.

Political tensions surrounding this year’s biennale were particularly visible in the case of South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. Goliath had originally been expected to participate officially before South African authorities blocked the presentation of her work “Elegy”, describing it as divisive because it referenced a Palestinian poet.Despite the decision, Goliath proceeded with an independent presentation at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin in collaboration with arts organisation Ibraaz.

The performance features classically trained female vocalists sustaining single notes until their voices fade before being replaced by another performer.Originally conceived in 2015, the work functions as a ritual mourning piece dedicated to women killed through racialised and sexualised violence. Visitors described the installation as one of the most emotionally direct works outside the biennale’s central exhibition.

At the Arsenale, American artist Carrie Schneider contributed one of the most visually expansive works in the main exhibition “In Minor Keys.” Schneider’s installation stretches across approximately 1.5 kilometres of photographic material derived from repeated stills of La Jetée by Chris Marker.The scale of the installation stood out inside the industrial spaces of the Arsenale, where several works struggled to compete with the architecture’s vast dimensions.

Other notable contributions included photographic archives from Francophone Africa by Akinbode Akinbiyi and documentary material addressing destruction and displacement in Gaza.British-Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane presented one of the quieter but widely praised exhibitions at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation. Her project “5 Works” incorporates materials and labour drawn entirely from Venice itself.

The installation includes a newly constructed wooden pier intended for future public use, a curtain made of Murano glass beads assembled by inmates from the Giudecca women’s prison, and a modified church lighting mechanism activated through the insertion of a one-euro coin.Questions surrounding surveillance and state power appear prominently in “Canicula,” a film exhibition at the Complesso dell’Ospedaletto.

Lebanese-British artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan contributed “450XL: the Story of a Fugitive Sound,” an investigation into allegations that Serbian authorities used sonic devices to disperse peaceful anti-government demonstrators.Installed inside the former hospital’s historic music room, the work combines witness testimony, sound analysis and multi-screen projections arranged like protest placards.

The war in Ukraine also remains a major presence at the biennale. The Ukrainian pavilion features a large concrete deer sculpture by Zhanna Kadyrova that was transported from Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine after difficult evacuation efforts during the conflict.Video footage documents the sculpture’s journey through Europe as refugees from Pokrovsk encounter the work in transit. Pokrovsk is now under Russian military control, giving the installation additional political and emotional weight.

Technology and artificial intelligence appear prominently inside the Chinese pavilion at the Arsenale, where artists explored the relationship between machines and creativity. Works include robotic calligraphy, digitally generated landscapes and interactive installations inspired by Chinese mythology and gaming culture.

One of the final installations in the pavilion is a field of “digital chairs” by Chinese designer Zhang Zhoujie, offering visitors a place to rest after navigating the biennale’s large-scale exhibitions.Away from official installations, one of the unexpected attractions of the opening week emerged outside the Polish pavilion, where a nesting gull drew crowds of confused visitors unsure whether the bird itself formed part of an artwork.

The gull, enclosed behind a temporary white fence, quickly became an informal symbol of the biennale’s blend of performance, ambiguity and public spectacle.