Yale Art Student Aliza Shvarts Aborts All Over The Art World
17 April 2008, 3:50 PM. By Alex Alvarez
Ok, fine, internet. Fine. You’ve been hurling the “Aliza Shvarts-abortion-art project” story at us all day and we’ve been trying to ignore and hoping we could maybe avoid writing about it but, no. Here it is. After shvarting all over our panties all day because of this stupid fucking story, we’ll take the bait.
A little background for those of you who have managed to avoid this so far: Aliza is an art major at Yale. That sums about the story completely, actually, but we’ll continue. For her senior art project, brave feminist fighter Aliza artificially inseminated herself for nine months while taking abortifacient drugs. Her exhibition includes video footage of her artistic process as well as blood from her numerous miscarriages.
Aliza says she did this in the hopes of fostering dialogue on the “relationship between art and the human body.” Well, guess what. That’s not what people have ended up talking about. Surprise, surprise:
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.
Yeah, hey. We don’t buy it at all. We’re going to go out on this huge, fucking limb and say we don’t believe Aliza when she purports to inspire any sort of dialogue- unless that dialogue is about Aliza. This project is not thoughtful enough in its motive or execution to have been anything other than the self-promotion of an entitled, selfish person with nothing to say.
We resent anyone who tries to justify an irresponsible act of self-promotion - self, not cause, not an idea - as a platform for dialogue. There is “reaction to being punched in the gut,” and there is “dialogue.” And both can happen, sure. But let’s please not confuse one with the other. And let’s also not pretend we are after one and not the other, because that’s a gross insult to everyone’s intelligence. This is not someone dicking around in her backyard with a turkey baster and wire hanger. This is a fucking student at an Ivy League university. To believe one can provoke thought through an act that primarily provokes rage is to have failed, utterly, in one’s intent. We suspect Aliza is smart enough to know this.
So if this work is the genesis of argument and action, and Aliza is willing to take responsibility for that, she should be willing to take responsibility for a 12-year-old rape victim who is denied the morning-after pill because this person is adding fodder to the idea that women just don’t know what to do with themselves. As such, this art project is a direct assault to feminism and to women’s health.
And that is what makes us angry. Not that Aliza is a self-entitled hipster. Not that she’s offensive. Not that her work is arguably hurtful to women who happen to be infertile. Not that she’s making or not making a coherent artistic statement. What makes us angry is that this will have consequences for people for whom this is more than a final project grade.
It’s fairly impossible to act as a mouth piece if one has absolutely nothing to say.
For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse [Yale Daily News]
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The pope just cancelled his concert, I mean service, at Yankee stadium to go meet with Aliza, his spokesperson quoted his Holiness as saying … ” NY can wait, Aliza has created a masterpiece that allows me the opportunity to explore the relationship between art and the human body.” Evidently if you had tickets to see the Pope & Yankees, those tickets will be honored at the Pope and abortion art event!
Between this and Bush I think we can set fire to Yale now.
Statement by Helaine S. Klasky — Yale University, Spokesperson
New Haven, Conn. — April 17, 2008
“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.
She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.
Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns. (http://www.yale.edu/opa/)”
@ Anon: Thanks! This was posted as a comment under the “soapbox” post as well, so I’ll copy and paste what I said there…
I’m not sure this changes my opinion of her senior project at all. My beef has never been with her decision to harm her own body but, rather, with the harm her piece might have had on others’ without them having a say.
I’m curious about what other people have to say about it, though. Did this change the way you felt about her project?
This biatch is crazy. period.
people are always bitching at artists saying they are self centered. All art has an element of self. When dealing with bodily issues, what could be more poignant than using yourself? Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, any performance artist. Any comedian, any actor. They are successful because they are using themselves and they HAVE to be ok with being in the public spotlight. It doesn’t mean that they are egotistical (though some can be, obviously)
Would it be right to use OTHER people’s menstrual blood? or explore your own relationships to the substance.
It’s a lot more pretentious to pretend your work can change the world than to make work that relates to your struggle of self.
Please, bitch just wated to draw attention to herself. Did the having this project turn out to be a hoax change the way I felt about it? No, because I knew it was a hoax all along. Just look at her poser self. She is just a clone of every other hipster wannabe, from the quirky haircut to the ironic frumpy pants to the fringy booties paired also ironically with american apparel leggings, why she belongs in the cover of Paper magazine!!! So did you think this imbecile would be able to withstand the horribly painful cramps that come with a miscarriage over and over and over? and what about using a turkey baster to impregnate herself? yeah right. Had she had the balls to actually go with such an outrageous stunt, dont you think she would have actually fucked the sperm donors and also filmed the act? after all, the concept was that she could do with her body as she pleases, and the issue some people have with abortion is not only the abortion per se but the act which led to it for which they think a woman should bear the consequences: fornication.
From the beginning I thought it was a desperate stunt designed to call attention to herself. I don’t think her having 10 or 25 actual abortions has any bearing on anything as some crazy women do have multiple abortions albeit privately and legally. Having the hoax revealed by herself does make the situation more hilarious to me as this “artiste” totally changed her tune as soon as the Yale staff threatened to Baker Act her. Not so radical then eh? Double lolz. Now excuse me while I get out of MY soapbox, kindly provided for by Guanabee. Thank you.
@ ian: And people still attempt to use the verb “bitch” in intellectual discussions as if they weren’t aware of how grossly misogynistic it is.
If you say something relates to dialogue and discussion, you make the distinction that your work exists beyond you, the artist. Whether or not you succeed in the mission that you, as the artist, explicitly state says a lot about the quality and success of your artistic experiment.
piruli, sorry about the bitch comment if it offends you. I should have used Kvetch.
Obviously the dialog has been opened since we are talking about it, so I assume that means it was successful.
What people seem to be ignoring is that the picture of her is probably an image of her doing another performance art piece. Chances are she doesn’t dress or act like that normally.
wut upsets me most is…. and no ones sed it yet…. she;s ugly!!!!
@ian: There have been many performance art pieces that involve menstrual blood, and paintings made with menstrual blood. I think the point in this case is that she purported her menstrual blood to be the products of conception expelled during actual miscarriages and abortions.
Anyway, the whole idea seems extremely implausible: that in the short space of nine months, she was able to impregnate herself multiple times and abort all of her pregnancies. Herbal abortifacients (what she claims to have used) are not very efficient, for one, and there isn’t really a very high chance that all of her inseminations were successful, and again she wouldn’t have been able to get pregnant again right away after aborting or miscarrying. That in the short space of nine months, this woman would have been able to inseminate herself at home, become pregnant, abort via herbal methods, and go through everything again multiple times is extremely unlikely. The human body does not work that way.
Mother?
Is that u?!
Where can we meet for my donation?
Dear operator,
Fake Wim Heitinga’s are spreading like the plague. Could you please abort those idiots from your respected portal?
Thanks in advance,
The Real Wim Heitinga
(recognizable by my yellow slippers)
Zhere must be a weason feur it. Its all reung teu kiel ze beebies
Sick twisted freak
This is one sick individual.
Heh, I don’t see the problem really!
you sick fuck
you should be locked up.
isolated.
Aliza Shvarts has some real mental problems in my opinion. This has absolutely nothing to do with art, but everything with a sick and twisted mind. I would recommend psychiatric help, if that fails… abort the abomination.
This really is a very sick story, she is abusing innocent people for her own project. The embryos could have had a Real Life!
Damn, I’ve been artificially inseminating myself over and over and nobody on the news seems to care. All the guys really do seem to appreciate that I swallow though. Do I have to take the day after pill too? and THEN it will be art?
I had boots like that in the late ’80’s.
Before one judges based on half-baked media coverage, how about hearing from the artist herself?
In her own words:
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
this is beyond disgusting.
We really need to establish an “art ethic” and a definition of art that recognizes real boundaries. For starters art should not be used to facilitate the destruction of human life or intentionally diminish the perception of our humanity; Abortion is not a reasonable means to achieve an artistic conclusion… I believe that the issue of abortion can be imagined, journalized and documented without inducing a pregnancy solely to provoke the a detrimental response from the fetus…
I have a certificate of mental illness right here waiting for signatures. First, we arrest her, then find her incompetent to stand trial, she goes to the mental institution. Let her out to attend trail in about two years, after lots of neuroleptic medication, then find her guilty of public indecency, she goes to the can for a month, but then we invoke Hendrix Vs Kansas, and stick her back in the nut house for another five years. When she come out she has tardive diskensia and looks like a old hag making faces. I call that a just punishment.
Hey, it is my art project
Dust, working with dust, excluding that what cannot be known but might be, that’s what she told with her ‘art’ to me. Limited art. Limtited mind. Limited artist. Legit trial, thank’s for exploring. Gratefull, that I do not have to walk that path. It has been explored. By this artist. Not a path I would like to follow. Done. Now let go.
i used to go to elementary and middle school with aliza, and while we weren’t friends, it was a small school and she was in many of my classes. i remember her being eccentric, intelligent (in a very stilted way…nothing genius) but somewhat pompous and arrogant, occasionally bossy, and chubby with long frizzy black hair. she wasn’t unpleasant, persay, but definitely not someone with whom i would hang out in my spare time. she was kind of a loner, and many people did dislike her because she was conceited and condescending.
in retrospect, i suppse that while the abortion art is definitely startling, regardless of who the artist is, its not exactly shocking coming from her. she was always kind of weird.
funny thing is, i dont remember her being particularly into art class. like, when i think of her, i dont think “artiste”.
i found out about this story after reading a blurb, a one-line quote in “Newsweek” yesterday. i recognized aliza’s name and, after googling her, found out about this.
personally, i think her “project” trivializes abortion, and gives pro-lifers even more ammunition with which to attack a woman’s right to choose. it makes a heartbreakingly tough decision for many women into a “performance piece”, subject to ridicule and criticism. i understand the points she is trying to make in her artist’s statement, but the manner in which she actualized these concepts is absolutely repulsive.