Advertisement

Swiss artist plans naked stroll at Art Basel

Malcolm Curtis
Malcolm Curtis - [email protected]
Swiss artist plans naked stroll at Art Basel
Exhibitionism or art? Screenshot: Vimeo

Controversial Swiss artist Milo Moiré has announced that she plans to walk naked through the Art Basel exhibition on Thursday after travelling there on a streetcar without wearing clothes.

Advertisement

Moiré caused a media stir in April at the Cologne art fair in Germany when she squeezed paint-filled eggs out of her vagina while standing naked on step ladders above a canvass to create a “PlopEgg” painting.

Swiss media are now questioning how far the 31-year-old will get with her performance at Art Basel, the giant contemporary art fair that opens to the public on Thursday.

Moiré, who calls herself a performance artist, painter and psychologist, pulled a similar stunt last year in Düsseldorf in a work she called “The Script System”.

She took a streetcar naked and strolled through city streets with words written on her body to denote items of clothing, with the action recorded on this video.

Art Basel is declining to comment on the planned performance.

“In the canton of Basel-City, mere nudity in public is not prohibited," Andreas Knuchel, city police spokesman, told 20 Minuten newspaper.

The “non-sexually motivated” baring of flesh in a public place is neither punishable by the criminal code or by cantonal law, Knuchel said.

If anyone is disturbed by the public display of nudity they can launch a complaint, which the public prosecutor would then have to examine, he said.

Moiré, who is currently based in Düsseldorf, says that she is interested in pushing boundaries with her art and expressing her art with her body.

Nudity is a key element in her works.

“I have a female body , and my art is manifested through it," she says on her website.

Her work has divided critics, with some seeing merit in what she does and others, such as Guardian critic Jonathan Jones, calling such performance art "a joke".

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also