080081 UE Birgit Juergenssen (2010W)

The Austrian artist Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003) is renowned as one of the leading exponents of feminist art. Parallel to the unleashed Actionism of her male colleagues, Jürgenssen used the masquerade and role play as vehicles to formulate a subtle and frequently self-ironic critique of the traditional images of femininity and assigned gender identities. Starting point of her experimental approach to the »self« within the cultural context was the female body, which she actuated as a location for artistic intervention, unmasking it as a projection screen of social codes. Jürgenssen's art unites social-political commitment, literary and psychoanalytical references and a surreal delight in metamorphosis and wordplay. Her multi-layered, ambiguous oeuvre anticipates in manifold ways later, post-feminist creative practices and encompasses performance-type body art, photographic scenarios, drawings of fetishist objects such as Schuhwerk (Shoework), and performances as a member of the women's artist group Die Damen.
The exercise is being held as part of the first posthumous retrospective devoted to Birgit Jürgenssen in the Bank Austria Kunstforum (16 December 2010 to 6 March 2011) in partnership with the Sammlung Verbund and the artist's estate.