A Yale University student’s senior art project, which documents her bleeding after what she said were repeated induced abortions, has sparked an outcry on the Internet.
Senior Aliza Shvarts told the Yale Daily News she wanted to provoke debate about the relationship between art and the human body, but the intention was not to scandalize anyone.
When she presented a mock-up of the project in class last week, some students were outraged. She told classmates she had herself artificially inseminated as often as possible, then took legal, herbal abortifacient drugs and filmed herself in her bathtub cramping and bleeding from the miscarriages. Her work will include a sculpture using video, her blood mixed with Vaseline wrapped in plastic, and a spoken piece describing what she had done.
After the story ran in the student newspaper, blogs were full of livid reactions, including horror that so many fetuses were apparently aborted, shock that someone would risk her own health and disdain for art and academia in general.
Shvarts’ adviser, Pia Lindman, and others in the art department did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
