NINA KLAFF

This project investigates the nature of the censorship of the nude human body. It uses the nipple as an emblem of supposed feminine bodies, and aims to argue that the social media ban of posting nipples, highlighted by the #FreeTheNipple campaign, is symptomatic of the hypersexualisation of bodies supposed female and perpetuates a patriarchal gender binary: masculine bodies are fine, feminine bodies are not.

 

It investigates the ways in which one might bypass the ban by covering the nipple, and, using Pfaff’s as the material for translation, with nods to the use of colour in the work of Howalt (2018), Mondrian (1937-42), Hirst (1991) and Klein (1960), and the feminist artistic practices of Smith (2016), Wageman (2017), and Abramow (2014).

 

The project investigates how colour can be used symbolically through the abstraction of form. It also aims to question why we remain so beguiled by the nude body, so reluctant to be confronted with its imagery, and argues that this is an archaic phenomenon that is emblematic of a white cis-heteropatriarchy that, in its principles and regulations, continually exposes itself as viewing the female body as a sexual object. 

 

To reflect that this issue is one of importance on social media apps such as Instagram, the images included were made using camera phones, either by way of photographing or screenshotting a subject.

 

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