The performance by Milo Moiré was aimed at bringing attention to sexual violence against women.
In the project that Milo calls “Mirror Box” the artist wears a box-like structure made of mirrors around her upper or lower body parts. She calls on the passersby to put their hands within the box and stroke her genitals for 30 seconds. According to Milo, it is a symbol of the inherent consensual nature of sexual acts. The artist had already taken the “Mirror Box” to Amsterdam and Dusseldorf before she got arrested for the same performance in London’s Trafalgar Square.
“I am standing here today for women’s rights and sexual self-determination,” she declared during the first “Mirror Box” performance. “Women have a sexuality, just like men have one. However, women decide for themselves when and how they want to be touched, and when they don’t.”
This performance is a follow-up to her naked protest on 8 January in Cologne against the events that took place at the New Year’s Eve and saw over 1.000 women sexually assaulted by unidentified men.
During the performance in London Milo got arrested by the police shortly after it had begun. She ended up spending 24 hours in detainment and paying a considerable fine. Having been released from prison, the artist claimed that the arrest was an example of the lack of unity in Europe. She drew a parallel with the cases in the continental Europe, underscoring that the police had not problems with performance art and suggesting that laws be regulated uniformly within the united Europe. She has also added that the UK should keep its EU membership. “Europe is like a big family in which you can't choose the members and you prefer some more than the other, but what Europe unites is the blood of freedom, which flows in all. Keeping Great Britain in the EU makes this family stronger,” she said.
“Moiré has taken the liberty of showing female desire, thus giving women a sexual voice,” reads the statement released by the press-release. “The audience’s reflection on the mirrored box simultaneously becomes a visual metaphor for the role reversal from voyeur to the object of view: a constant play of inversions analogous to our roles in the digital world.”
Milo Moiré’s web-site describes her as a conceptual artist, painter, art-amazon and psychologist.
Photo credit: Peter Palm