Move over soup, it seems there’s a new fluid taking the art world by storm — breastmilk.
Artists OONA and Lori Baldwin managed to do what an overpriced banana duct taped to a wall could only dream of, getting kicked out of Art Basel over a performance one gallery deemed “too controversial” for the NFT Bros, Ongo Gablogian cosplayers and general rich douchecanoes of Miami.
After their performance “Milking the Artist” was yanked from SCOPE Gallery’s Art Basel lineup for being too spicy — or, well milky — the pair decided their piece was better *lactate* than never (it couldn’t be helped), going through with a guerrilla version of the act before a crowd of 300 onlookers.
During the performance, the artists milked what appeared to be pair of prosthetic breasts, auctioning off the resultant two glasses of milk for 50 Ethereum ($64,000) and 158 Ethereum ($200,000) respectively — a sum that will likely be worth a total of $5 in two months time — before security booted them from the venue.
A commentary on the sexualization of breasts in art, the artists made their intentions clear, reiterating their statement in a since-viral video depicting the incident. “Do I need to be dead for this art to be valuable?” one of the performers can be heard saying. “Is this not art? Why does this make you so uncomfortable? Do I have to be naked?”
The duo reiterated these sentiments in a statement shared to their website. “At most art fairs, bare boobs only exist in paintings — framed like dead objects,” they explained. “Here the breasts are audacious because they are attached to a living consenting body.”
“The Art world’s insidious underbelly determines which artists to milk and what their milk is worth,” they continued, adding that their act plays “with context and its relationship to value.” “The performance piece is used to question the ‘general obsession with objectifying women.”
Tits: Somehow more offensive than crypto bros jerking off to Jeff Koons!
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