Yale University art major Aliza Shvarts is disgusting virtually everybody by displaying her ‘art’. Her ‘art’ is the result of repeatedly artificially inseminating herself and then aborting her pregnancies over a nine month period of time. She videotaped the forced miscarriages and took the blood from the abortions, mixed it with Vaseline, smeared it on some kind of cubes, hung it around ‘artistically’ and expects people to come around and admire it. There will probably be Ivy League elitists who actually come around and ‘discuss the meaning’ of this woman’s gross dripping goo. That’s just pathetic in so many ways.
Aliza Shvarts says she expects that to “inspire some sort of discourse” and “provoke inquiry”. Its more likely to inspire and provoke projectile vomiting. ( Yale Daily News )
UPDATE: Many other blogs are reporting that there is a great deal of speculation as to whether or not her story of these multiple pregnancies is a hoax. Aliza Shvarts claims to have gotten sperm donations from fellow male students and impregnated herself via the turkey baster method. As we all know, that’s not known to be a very reliable method of self-impregnation. She then took herbal ‘remedies’ to induce abortions. She filmed herself in the process of the alleged forced miscarriages.
In all likelihood, these forced miscarriages never happened. Its more likely that the results of her attempts at artificially inseminating herself and then aborting the fetuses was really just her normal monthly flow. That means that her ‘art’ is just her menstrual yucky-de-yuk that the effete elite will be oohing and ahhing over when they go to her art exhibit.
I’m don’t know if her claims are accurate or not. I actually hope that she’s either so deluded that she mistook her monthly flow for a miscarriage or that she actually deliberately mislead. I guess short of subjecting her to a physical exam we’ll never know. I can’t imagine that she’d object to a physical exam considering she hasn’t minded putting her whatever it is out for display as ‘art’. Its like a sick, odd kind of exhibitionism.
If it is all fake then I’m not sure who the joke is on.
UPDATE #2: Apparently, this is a ‘performance art’ piece. See this comment for better explanation. I still think its disgusting, but it seems the joke is on us.
The photos below show Aliza Shvarts as an honor student preparing to go to Yale (left) and Aliza Shvarts as a student at Yale taken in 2008 (right).
Aliza Shvarts Photos
Aliza Shvarts
Just want you to know …. this is the REAL art of pregnancy.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:35 am
disgusting on so many levels
April 17th, 2008 at 9:39 am
We can only hope that she’s ruined any chance that she’ll be able to procreate in the future.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I unloaded some art into my toilet this morning. Will Yale give me a degree now?
April 17th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Uhh - gross, yes. However, immoral too. Has the woman absolutely NO ethics or conscience?
April 17th, 2008 at 10:14 am
I wonder if her parents are proud.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Art, blah. There is no accounting for taste any more. I far cry from Michelangelo I’d say. Why in the world is a “religious” school like Yake allowing this junk. Don’t they have charter or something?
April 17th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Bryan, I spent 6 years at Yale. They were started by seminarians back in the 1600’s, but they are no longer a religious school. The only vestage of their seminarian past is their divinity school. Ever wonder where all those ultra-liberal pastors come from?
Yale is definitely secular. The Yale medical center is where you go in New Haven for an abortion.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Yale is definitely NOT a religious school. The Ivy Leagues in general are extremely liberal. You’d have to search really hard to find a pro-life Ivy Leaguer that graduated in the last 20 years. Yale was conservative in the days that Bush went there, but times have sure changed.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Aliza Shvarts Abortion Art…
An art student at Yale has created what she calls abortion art. Her exhibit will soon be on display for all the effete elite to roam around viewing this sick puppy’s disgusting display of nine months worth of abortions she induced in herself.
I. …
April 17th, 2008 at 10:48 am
MBT, 6 years? Were you on the remedial program?
April 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Someone just asked me if our tax dollars would be used in any way for this? Is that possible? Surely, since its a private school, it would just be a waste of her parents’ money. I certainly hope that our tax dollars wouldn’t be involved.
Does anyone know?
April 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Of course, I realize that they are not religious in that sense, just in the sense that they started as church schools.
When I was clerking during law school, we used to always laugh at the Harvard and Yale law clerks. They were always the worst because none of them could write worth a damn. The old saying was at Harvard and Yale, they don’t teach you to be a lawyer, they teach you to be an academic.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Beth, indirectly, our tax dollars go to this. Yale is a private school, but this woman might be the recipient of federal student loans. Also, Yale receives a lot of federal funding for various things. Our tax dollars go to Yale, which supports this project, but not directly to this project (most likely).
April 17th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Oh, nice. Now that’s about one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard. Using parts of the human body in “art”. Hmmm. Why does that smack of stuff the Nazis did? Skin lampshades and such. Isn’t Svarts a Jewish name? Just “provoking inquiry”.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I hope someone attempts to prosecute her for practicing medicine without a license….just on GP’s.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Even if she never was really pregnant, the fact stands that she presented her idea to the faculty as art made from the products of abortion.
They still approved this idea and agreed to display it. If it turns out the girls is delusional or a liar, then what we know is that the faculty of Yale is, at least in theory, ok with making art out of babies.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:59 am
[...] and proves that it can combine an exercise in modern political understanding with quite possibly the most disgusting artistic medium ever thought, anytime, any place. With bonus absolute disregard for human life. These icons link [...]
April 17th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Dean, that’s a good point. Instead of expelling her and referring the situation to a prosecutor for criminal consideration, Yale promoted her. That’s the bigger issue in this story.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I think Yale (in the end) will be forced to do something about this. They will not let her get a diploma with abortions as her thesis. The Yale administration is too intelligent and has too much to lose in PR to let that happen.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Art:
Bryan mentions Michaelangelo, who was certainly controversial in his day. Donatello is credited for the first nude statue in western art since the Romans. THAT was controversial.
What disciplined adventurous artists in the old days were their sponsors. Wealthy families and institutions paid them for work as contractors and thusly the end product would generally conform to the standards of society. Artists have no such restraints these days, and in fact benefit from the media’s promotion of controversial material.
Not that I’m calling for a return of the Landed Gentry and an oligarchical ruling class, but at least it had benefits.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Folks, I’ve been on other blogs/news sites, and this is feeling more and more to me like a hoax. The “art” was having everyone tune in and get riled up. Given the logistics of what had to have been done, it’s looking like none of the abortions/miscarriages ever happened. This is just so artistic, isn’t it?
April 17th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
if you think there aren’t any pro-lifers at the ivies, then you clearly haven’t been there lately. The thing of it is, her adviser is a visiting prof, and you don’t have to run your thesis past anyone else. there was no other authority figure to stop her, much to everyone’s dismay.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
ignatius, I was a post-doc there. The remedial plan, of sorts…
April 17th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Diggs is proclaiming this a hoax.
What exactly was the purpose of this joke? 15 minutes of fame? Universal disgust?
April 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
beautiful video btw, is that you Beth?