Art student wants to lose virginity in front of audience – has he gone too far?
From body grafitti to chicken slaughter, students have always pushed the limits with performance art. But having sex for the first time in a gallery?
How far would you go for a piece of performance art? Photograph: Twitter
"Art can't shock us anymore – we are all bohemians now," says artist Grayson Perry.
But student artist at Central Saint Martin's, Clayton Pettet, has attracted much attention with a planned piece of performance art, during which he will lose his virginity in front of 100 people in a gallery in Hackney.
The performance, entitled Art School Stole My Virginity, will see 19-year-old Pettet have sex with another boy on 25 January, in front of a live audience. People in the crowd will then be invited to ask questions.
"[I had] the idea when I was 16," says Pettet, "when all my peers were losing their virginity. It was incredibly hard for me to ask why I was still a virgin and why it meant so much to people. My piece isnt a statement as much as it is a question."
Pettet wants people to question the importance of virginity and the traditional values that we place upon it, including issues that surround gender and sexuality.
"Virginity has almost become heteronormative in its definition," he says. "Is virginity even real? Or is it just an ignorant word that was used to dictate the value of a woman's worth pre-marriage?"
Can art still be shocking, or has it all been done before? Here are some student artists who have caused a stir with their artwork.
Abortion
Aliza Shvarts caused outrage when she was a student in Yale back in 2008, when it was reported that for a performance art project she would artificially inseminate herself and then induce miscarriages.
"The 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," she wrote.
Helaine Klasky, then associate dean and vice president for public affairs at Yale, later disputed that she was actually having miscarriages, saying: "The project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman's body."
Chicken slaughter
This year a student at Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgaryslaughtered a chicken in the university cafeteria as part of a performance piece for a school project. After the act, the student dropped the dead chicken into a pot, as if preparing to eat it. Manystudents were shocked by the performance and the police were called.
Voina
The Russian street-art group Voina are known for their provocative works of performance art. The independent group includes students at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography, Moscow State University, and the University of Tartu.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, from the punk-protest group Pussy Riot, was a former member of the group. Past performances include Fuck for the Heir Puppy Bear!, where five couples had sex in public in Moscow, and How to Snatch a Chicken, in which a Voina member stuffed an entire chicken into her vagina.
Collecting secrets
Elani Sininger, a student at Northern Kentucky University, decided to create art in collaboration with people on the street. She stripped half-naked in Cincinnati and lay on the floor with a sign that asked people to write their secrets, confessions and general thoughts on her body.
She says of the performance: "I wanted people to come and write down their secrets or something they wanted to release. Let them write it on my body and then walk away and release all of their negative energy with me."
Secrets revealed ranged from "I like feet" on her foot, to "weirdo" and "666" on her upper right leg.
Can performance art still be shocking? Has it all been done before? And can an artist go too far? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
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