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Politics & Media
Apr 17, 2008, 01:50PM
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DISCUSSION
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This is a horrifying insult to anyone who's wanted children and been unable to do so themselves. Furthermore, Ms. Shvarts is engaging in wildly dangerous self-fetishization, banishing a very real and important moral issue into the background of her quest for self-importance. This will only hurt a woman's right to choose. No pro-choice person could ever begin to associate themselves with this heinous act that will now define arguments about abortion for years.
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Follow up from an official Yale Press release: "Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."
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Student Uses Her Own Abortions For Senior Art Project
Holy shit...
"Beginning next Tuesday, 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.
The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.
But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”
“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”
