VALIE EXPORT investigated the production of images, exploring her own body as an artistic instrument. Hilda de Paulo told me, during one of our conversations regarding reperformance concepts, that art critic Marvin Carlson said that EXPORT developed “an approach to performance called ‘feminist action,’ which pursued a similarly fractured agenda, ‘seeking to substitute the equation material = body = nature for body = social construct = transfigured nature’” [1].

In “Hilda de Paulo (After VALIE EXPORT)” (2020), the artist mobilizes a sign associated with a universe historically and culturally constructed as feminine, embedding it into her own skin, and reconstruing the performance by transfeminism. The tattooed garter belt takes on meanings of seduction and of oppression in a tense game where hetero cisnormative codes are challenged, expanding the meanings of womanhood. The socially constructed body as a fixation is the expressive dimension of this work, which is part of an ongoing series titled “Hilda de Paulo” (2020–). The documentation of the tattoo on her leg is also part of the exhibition “Little Princess of the Cerrado” at CAAA Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs in Guimarães, Portugal.

[1] Excerpt from the text “Autofictions by Hilda de Paulo, an artist of encounters” by Gabriela de Laurentiis.