A Life Dedicated to Disruption: The Art of Valie Export Born Waltraud Lehner in 1940 in the Austrian city of Linz, Valie Export emerged as a pivotal figure in the landscape of postwar art—a landscape she would relentlessly challenge and redefine. Her very name, adopted in 1967, is a declaration of artistic intent: a shedding of familial ties (both paternal and marital) and an embrace of self-invention. The moniker “Valie Export,” boldly capitalized, wasn’t merely a change; it was an act of exporting identity, a deliberate construction meant to dismantle conventional expectations surrounding…