Detail

The four women artists, Ona B., Evelyn Egerer, Birgit Jürgenssen and Ingeborg Strobl, carried out their first joint action in the railway restaurant of Vienna’s Westbahnhof [West Terminal]. It was entitled “Aus gegebenem Anlass” [For Good Reasons]. In addition, they published a postcard in which they posed in a manner that echoed a 1968 photograph taken by Christian Skrein. The avantgarde of the ‘Viennese art scene at the time such as Christian Ludwig Attersee or Oswald Wiener had themselves photographed by Skrein for a poster with the slogan “Wir nicht” [Not Us]. They sat on director’s chairs and their names appeared above their heads. While each of the male artists was named by his last family name, just the first name – Ingrid – was given to the only woman on the photo, thus establishing her almost complete lack of importance as far as the others were concerned. The ‘DIE DAMEN’ action twenty years later is a humorous and biting send-up. In addition to the names of the artists there is an additional sentence stating: ‘The four new members of the First Viennese Men’s Choir’ which is how they introduced themselves at the presentation of the postcard. The following year the artists staged the action, ‘Postmodern’ in the Vienna Secession and established the name of the group with both a postage and a rubber stamp. The ironic and critical self-staging was to become a characteristic method employed by the artist group ‘DIE DAMEN’. They commented on the male-dominated Viennese art scene as well as politics and society in general. Using the aesthetic resources of staged performances and parody-based events they took a position at the interface of visual arts, fashion, design and advertising while at the same time emphasising that gender roles were not issues limited to any specific area. Significantly, in 1993, New York artist Lawrence Weiner replaced Ingeborg Strobl to become the fourth member of DIE DAMEN.