Abortion Art
 

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse
Martine Powers
Staff Reporter
Published Thursday, April 17, 2008
Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.

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."

The "fabricators," or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

Art major Juan Castillo '08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result.

"I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn't," Castillo said. "I think that most people were very resistant to thinking about what the project was really about. [The senior-art-project forum] stopped being a conversation on the work itself."

Although Shvarts said she does not remember the class being quite as hostile as Castillo described, she said she believes it is the nature of her piece to "provoke inquiry."

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts said. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."

The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts' senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

Few people outside of Yale's undergraduate art department have heard about Shvarts' exhibition. Members of two campus abortion-activist groups . Choose Life at Yale, a pro-life group, and the Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale, a pro-choice group . said they were not previously aware of Schvarts' project.

Alice Buttrick '10, an officer of RALY, said the group was in no way involved with the art exhibition and had no official opinion on the matter.

Sara Rahman '09 said, in her opinion, Shvarts is abusing her constitutional right to do what she chooses with her body.

"[Shvarts' exhibit] turns what is a serious decision for women into an absurdism," Rahman said. "It discounts the gravity of the situation that is abortion."

CLAY member Jonathan Serrato '09 said he does not think CLAY has an official response to Schvarts' exhibition. But personally, Serrato said he found the concept of the senior art project "surprising" and unethical.

"I feel that she's manipulating life for the benefit of her art, and I definitely don't support it," Serrato said. "I think it's morally wrong."

Shvarts emphasized that she is not ashamed of her exhibition, and she has become increasingly comfortable discussing her miscarriage experiences with her peers.

"It was a private and personal endeavor, but also a transparent one for the most part," Shvarts said. "This isn't something I've been hiding."

The official reception for the Undergraduate Senior Art Show will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 25. The exhibition will be on public display from April 22 to May 1. The art exhibition is set to premiere alongside the projects of other art seniors this Tuesday, April 22 at the gallery of Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall on Chapel Street.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24513
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We had a discussion awhile back about art and subjectivity - Pollack compared to Rembrant and whatnot. Well, I suppose this is the extreme. Is this art? On the one hand, there is the woman's right to chose and the mostly simultaneous argument of as long as it is inside of me it is mine to dispose of. On the other side, there is the it is life at conception point of view. Many of other views are somewhere in the middle. Then, there is the whole what is art question. I mean Van Gogh cut off his ear and then did a fab self portrait - which is mildly similar to what this person did here.

Anyway, is it disgusting or is it art - or both for that matter.

I think it is just sick and she out to be put in jail for murder - and, mind you, I am for the right to chose.

Nutty. Almost Ono-esque.

But is it art?

I just cannot accept this as art. I can only think of the lives wasted by this woman. It is one thing to abort for what I consider valid reasons (situation, disease, rape, etc. ) -- but this sicko purposefully got pregnant for the sole purpose of aborting the child. I cannot even fathom that and I know it is judgemental of me and I do not care.

Interestingly, in a way, this is no different than the piggish press taking pictures of the dying Diana instead of trying to help her - though in that instance, money was the driving motivator. Similarly, taking pics of the buring nepalm victims in Nam - though there publicity of autrocities allegedly was the motivating factor.

I didn't have time to read the second article posted, but as a woman who desparately wants to be a mother and can not have children, I am actually speechless with disgust at this.

Well, she'll be crying in a few years. You can't subject your body to that over and over again and not get some sort of a backlash eventually. And who knows what's in that herbal concoction she's using to trigger the terminations.
Yep, one day she may actually want to bear a child but then her uterus will be one huge lump of worn-out scar tissue. And God says "ha!".

where is that "it's a vagina, madame, not a clown car" graphic when we need it?

This is beyond disgusting and offensive. I'm speechless.

this reminds me of the 'artist' that starved a dog to death as part of his exhibition. this is absolutely worthless, damaging, pitiful. why cant people use their time and energy in a more positive way....

OMG - I just snorted out loud in my office :eek:

Yes, paint something pretty. Kittens, unicorns, or crying clowns. Anything but placental lining. (shudder)

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/c...orn-puzzle.jpg

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/c.../cryingcln.jpg

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/c...ed_pastel_.jpg

It was all a hoax.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-...art-claim-scam

According to him it is. I read it quickly - does he know this for sure or is he speculating it was a hoax?

I just hope it was a hoax. This story was just too bizarre. This girl probably had a strong case of "look at me!" "look at me!" so she tried to do something outrageous for attention. Obviously, her father didn't bounce her on his knee enough when she was 2. And look what happened.

You mean this one?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/89/24...664e6841fa.jpg

^^^^

a$$wipe :thumbsup:

Hopefully it's a hoax. Sick f*cking joke if it is. If not, then I'm about to throw up.

What a SICK CU*T - I can think of no more appropriate use of that term.
____________________________________________________

In her own words, by Aliza Shvarts

"For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding.

To protect myself and others, only I know the number of fabricators who participated, the frequency and accuracy with which I inseminated and the specific abortifacient I used. Because of these measures of privacy, the piece exists only in its telling. This telling can take textual, visual, spatial, temporal and performative forms — copies of copies of which there is no original.

This piece — in its textual and sculptural forms — is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body. The artwork exists as the verbal narrative you see above, as an installation that will take place in Green Hall, as a time-based performance, as a independent concept, as a myth and as a public discourse.

It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership. An intentional ambiguity pervades both the act and the objects I produced in relation to it. The performance exists only as I chose to represent it. For me, the most poignant aspect of this representation — the part most meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the aspect that has not been discussed thus far) — is the impossibility of accurately identifying the resulting blood. Because the miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there was ever a fertilized ovum or not. The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is a matter of reading.

This ambivalence makes obvious how the act of identification or naming — the act of ascribing a word to something physical — is at its heart an ideological act, an act that literally has the power to construct bodies. In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.

In some sense, neither term is exactly accurate or inaccurate; the ambiguity is not merely a matter of context, but is embodied in the physicality of the object. This central ambiguity defies a clear definition of the act. The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming — an authorial act.

It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it.

As an intervention into our normative understanding of “the real” and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are “meant” to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are “natural” (while all the other potential functions are “unnatural”) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives.

Just as it is a myth that women are “meant” to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are “meant” for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not “meant” for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are “meant” to birth a child.

When considering my own bodily form, I recognize its potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function. While my organs are capable of engaging with the narrative of reproduction — the time-based linkage of discrete events from conception to birth — the realm of capability extends beyond the bounds of that specific narrative chain. These organs can do other things, can have other purposes, and it is the prerogative of every individual to acknowledge and explore this wide realm of capability."

According to Wikipedia it is fiction, the artist made it up. Yale U press release states:

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," it read. "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."

She's still a sick cu*t

Couldn't have said it better. Honestly, I couldn't even read more than one sentence of that stuff. I would have nightmares.

And - she is not exactly denying it happened. I do not or at least hope it did not happen.

Stupid bitch. :distress:

She did deny it according to the Yale press release. But that could just be a CYA move on the university's part. I sincerely hope it's a hoax. This woman's got some baad karma coming regardless.