Exposed

Abstract

The article focuses on VALIE EXPORT’s Transparent Space, a 2001 public art project in Vienna that is, at once, an autonomous artwork and a dedicated women’s art space. The analysis is concerned with the contradictions encountered in this double function of Transparent Space, as they relate to feminism, and, in particular, to feminists making and curating art. Also known as Cube EXPORT and Women’s Bridge, Transparent Space is implicated in urban transformation dynamics in their longitudinal dimension as they alter infrastructures and their redistributive (in)justice. Equally, it is implicated in questions that arise about public art commissions and neoliberal restructuring austerity measures which precarise long-term provisions for use and maintenance, but also in the legacies of second-wave feminist art making alongside current and ongoing practices of feminist art work and the labour involved. Transparent Space exposes – ie renders visible – a lack of infrastructural support that may be seen to undermine the agenda of ‘making women visible’. The analysis therefore asks whether Transparent Space is found to both honour and harness the ‘labour of love’ performed by women and feminists making art.