New York-based artist Spencer Tunick is here to change some things with a powerful art “titstallation,” if you will (yes, I had to). A specialist in large-scale nude photographs, he’s asking 100 women to pose nude at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 17, at sunrise. Participants will be a living, posing metaphor of what it means to subvert oppressive political forces. Get it, you naked social justice warrior queens.
This isn’t the least logical kind of art-as-protest for the occasion. After all, the Republican party isn’t generally known for championing women’s rights. From blocking the Paycheck Fairness Act from coming into fruition in 2014, to widely restricting access to safe and legal abortion, it’s been a treacherous upward battle to get these regressive conservatives to consider women to be, ya know, citizens who are entitled to equal rights under the law, or even full human beings.
Want to Pose in Spencer Tunick’s Photo Shoot of 100 Nude Women During RNC? How to Apply:https://t.co/PP84Xhd5nj pic.twitter.com/nT9lzRrQns
— Cleveland Scene (@ClevelandScene) May 12, 2016
He explains the movement as a way to exhibit “the knowledge and wisdom of progressive women and the concept of “Mother Nature” into and onto the convention center, cityscape and horizon of Cleveland.” Finally, something other than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is putting Cleveland on the map.
I mean, besides looking pretty goddamn cool for Instagram purposes and then having to stage another nude photoshoot in the inevitable event Instagram bans this for nudity (ahhh, the cycle of life is a gorgeous thing), what’s the point? Tunick continues, “We want to express the belief that we will rely upon the strength, intuition and wisdom of progressive and enlightened women to find our place in nature and to regain the balance within it. The mirrors communicate that we are a reflection of ourselves, each other, and of, the world that surrounds us. The woman becomes the future and the future becomes the woman.”
In light of New York Magazine’s The Cut recently naming single women as the most powerful demographic, it’s no surprise he’s chosen the fairer sex as the subject of the movement. Writer Rebecca Traister credits a woman’s marital status, or lack thereof, to unprecedented liberal voter turnout, which has the influence to largely decide “women’s ability to control their reproduction, to seek redress from workplace discrimination and benefit from programs like affirmative action that bolster their ability to pursue equal opportunities.”
But Tunick’s mandate isn’t necessarily to empower solo women, but to create a powerful cohesion throughout the gender to elicit even more radical change. Not much of a self-professed protestor, he told Cleveland Scene that he likens the project “to be a work that women can be part of, maybe to heighten the idea that women will decide the outcome of this election and will have a more powerful presence in the future of politics, the future of the country, and the future of the world,” he said. “It’s not so much a protest but an action, a wake-up call to the absurdity of politics and discrimination.”
@SpencerTunick Hey Spence? yeah sorry I can’t make it. Not taking my clothes off for Trump in this lifetime pic.twitter.com/Gs67KEGN18
— Mindy Mitchell (@MindyMitchell12) May 12, 2016
The idea is a welcome antidote to the harmful voter apathy phenomenon. The title of the installation reads “POSE NUDE IN CLEVELAND DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION”, which, to be honest, sounds like a Craigslist ad that won’t end well. But hopefully for Tunick’s sake, and for all women, the magical site of 100 naked female bodies will placate the Republican party into giving us our damn money.
It takes a village, man.
Original by: Marissa Miller
