The Rencontres d’Arles is delighted to present, for the first time in France, the exhibition A Feminist Avant-Garde. Photographs and Performances of the 1970s from the Verbund Collection, Vienna, with over 200 works by 71 female artists. The exhibition title refers to “an” Avant-Garde, one containing a multitude of feminist movements, diverse in age, nationality, and culture. Feminisms are also considered in intersectional terms because some of those female artists have experienced, and continue to experience, multiple forms of discrimination, including racism, classism, and gender. The exhibition is divided into five themes: women’s reduction to “wife, mother, and housewife”; their resulting feeling of “being locked-up”; the questioning of “dictates of beauty and representations of female bodies”; explorations of “female sexuality”; and debates around “female roles and identities.”

Helena Almeida (1934–2018), Emma Amos (1938-2020), Sonja Andrade (1935), Eleanor Antin (1935), Anneke Barger (1939), Lynda Benglis (1941), Renate Bertlmann (1943), Tomaso Binga (1931), Dara Birnbaum (1946), Marcella Campagnano (1941), Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Judy Chicago (1939), Veronika Dreier (1954), Orshi Drozdik (1946), Lili Dujourie (1941), Mary Beth Edelson (1933), Renate Eisenegger (1949), VALIE EXPORT (1940), Esther Ferrer (1937), Marisa González (1945), Eulàlia Grau (1946), Barbara Hammer (1939-2019), Lynn Hershman Leeson (1941), Alexis Hunter (1948–2014), Mako Idemitsu (1940), Birgit Jürgenssen (1949–2003), Kirsten Justesen (1943), Anna Kutera (1952), Ketty La Rocca (1938–1976), Leslie Labowitz (1946), Suzanne Lacy (1945), Katalin Ladik (1942), Suzy Lake (1947), Natalia LL (1937), Lea Lublin (1929–1999), Karin Mack (1940), Dindga McCannon (1947), Ana Mendieta (1948–1985), Annette Messager (1943), Rita Myers (1947), Senga Nengudi (1943), Lorraine O’Grady (1934), ORLAN (1947), Gina Pane (1939–1990), Letícia Parente (1930-1991), Ewa Partum (1945), Friederike Pezold (1945), Margot Pilz (1936), Howardena Pindell (1943), Ingeborg G. Pluhar (1944), Angels Ribé (1943), Ulrike Rosenbach (1943), Martha Rosler (1943), Brigitte Aloise Roth (1951–2018), Victoria Santa Cruz (1922–2014), Suzanne Santoro (1946), Carolee Schneemann (1939–2019), Lydia Schouten (1955), Elaine Shemilt (1954), Cindy Sherman (1954), Penny Slinger (1954), Annegret Soltau (1946), Gabriele Stötzer (1953), Betty Tompkins (1945), Regina Vater (1943), Marianne Wex (1937-2020), Hannah Wilke (1940–1993), Martha Wilson (1947), Francesca Woodman (1958–1981), Nil Yalter (1938), Jana Želibská (1941).