Known for her radical avant-garde practice, Austrian artist Renate Bertlmann (b. 1943) has been active since the 1970s, a period when feminist discourse about equal rights and greater personal freedom for women gained traction in Western societies. As part of a generation of provocative women artists (including Judy Chicago, Jenny Holzer and Linder), Bertlmann’s works confronted patriarchal society by transgressing boundaries and subverting stereotypes regarding gender relations. Addressing themes of love, sexuality and desire, and often using her own body as an artistic medium, Bertlmann challenges the prevailing images of women in art and society through drawings, photographs, installations, sculptures and performances. Her work is characterised by its balance of humour and cutting social critique as well as its experimentation with a wide range of materials, including rubber teats, condoms, styrofoam eggs and pornographic imagery.

In 1978, Bertlmann  proclaimed her artistic philosophy as ‘amo ergo sum’ (‘I love, therefore I am’), a reformulation of the dictum ‘cogito ergo sum’ (‘I think therefore I am’) coined by 17th century French philosopher René Descartes. For this sculpture, which was made for the 2019 Venice Biennale, the text was hand-written by Bertlmann before being enlarged, rendered in steel and installed outside the Austrian pavilion, where its cursive script contrasted sharply with the building’s strict geometry. Built in 1934, the pavilion was designed by Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann, who controversially designed several officers’ clubs for the Nazi Government after Hitler annexed Austria. Wishing to distance herself from this history, Bertlmann (who was representing her country under another far-right government), ensured that the text did not touch the building; she even installed false walls and floors inside the pavilion to separate viewers from the building’s physical structure. ‘Amo’, she has said, is ‘a holistic experience of being, not an expression of feeling; “amo ergo sum” is the utopia of a whole person.’