A pair of artists were booted from a show over a live breast milking performance.
Over the last several decades, there's obviously been a large amount of artistic commentary surrounding the fetishization of female bodies. However, it seems as if a couple galleries at Art Basel Miami Beach missed the memo this past weekend, at least if their response to OONA and Lori Baldwin's new piece is any indication.
The duo popped up at SCOPE and Art Basel headquarters this past weekend to perform "MILKING THE ARTIST," which involved anonymous conceptual artist OONA producing breast milk in front of a large crowd of potential buyers, all before putting glasses of milk up for auction. According to a press release, the first glass of milk was purchased for $64,000 (50 ETH), though the highest bid came in the second day at a whopping $200,000 (158 ETH).
Despite the success of the piece, both artists were forcibly escorted off the premises by security. Notably though, this particular display was a guerrilla performance, organized after the artists were ejected from the SCOPE Gallery's Art Basel exhibition at the very last minute for being "too controversial."
As noted by TMZ, the breasts appeared to be prosthetic, with OONA later telling the outlet that "they are as real as you want them to be." More important though was the fact that the pumping itself was proceeded by both artists talking about the fetishization of female breasts.
“'Milking the Artist' straddles the line between provocation and performance," the release continued. "The work revolves around the concepts of ownership, value, censorship and consumption."
The statement also goes on to talk about the piece "centering the female body as a living thing in the context of an art gallery," which Baldwin appearing to touch on in an Instagram post about viewers being "invited to milk the artist" for themselves.
"If and only if you milk the artist then you can own her artwork. Because don’t all these art fairs already milk the artist?
#artbasel," as Baldwin wrote.
You can see TMZ's video footage of the latest incident, below.
Photo courtesy of OONA x Lori Baldwin
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