Friday 18 April 2008

Is this art???

It is very difficult to shock me with controversial projects in art. I like controversy in art. But this one seems too bizarre to me to accept as “art project”. Being firmly "pro-choice" in relation to abortion, the way it is handled here kind of horrified me.

Queerty reports referring to Yale Daily News:

Beginning next Tuesday, [Aliza] Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

In original news article, this art student provides with the following aim of her project:

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it is art but perhaps rather pointless one.

The article didn't get to explaining how does this art explore the relationship between human body and art. It just said that is what it was supposed to do. Perhaps there is a reason for this. How could one start talking about the artistic part of this before talking about all sorts of other issues. Impossible, just too controversial and bizarre. I for one cannot look at it. I get hallucinations when I see that much blood. In fact it took me few days to get over this.

artmika said...

Yale threatens to ban Shvarts’ art project from show

The University will not allow Aliza Shvarts ’08 to display her controversial senior art project at its scheduled opening Tuesday unless she confesses in writing that the exhibition is a work of fiction, Yale officials said Sunday.

The University, meanwhile, acknowledged that it has disciplined two faculty members for their role in allowing Shvarts to proceed with a project that she claimed included nine months of repeated artificial inseminations followed by self-induced miscarriages.

As news of Shvarts’ project swept across the Web last week and attracted the ire of students and private citizens alike, Shvarts and the University engaged in a match of he-said/she-said: Shvarts stood by her project as she described it earlier last week in a news release, while the University — claiming Shvarts had privately denied actually committing the acts in question — dismissed it as a hoax that amounted to nothing more than “performance art.”

artmika said...

Updates on this story - here