A museum in France will host an exhibition that asks guests to get naked, then have a drink and chat about the experience.
The event at macLYON, the museum of contemporary art in Lyon, is part of a series focusing on the existence of the body. A macLYON spokesperson described the purpose of the exhibition with these words: “Our idea is to question the body issue in a particular space to see how bodies interact with other bodies.”
macLYON organizes the event together with the regional branch of the French Naturist Federation for 11 Euros. The works from the 1960s on display present the body in its physical reality as a means of experience with oneself and the world.
Visiting the exhibition nude or performances by nude artists has been used in the art world before.
The Maillol Museum in Paris held a series of events last year for its Hyperrealism exhibition featuring incredibly realistic nude sculptures. The exhibition aimed to shed light on aesthetics in the age of photographic filters and metaverse, where we seem to have lost our connection with reality.
The Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum in the capital also held tours for nudists in 2018. The guests, who left their clothes in the cloakroom, had the opportunity to visit the gallery.
Last year, Paris also created a special area for nudists in the Bois de Vincennes park.
Also recently, a Swedish artist locked himself in a cage, alone and naked, for three days at a public exhibition in Stockholm’s Sodermalm district. The exhibition ended with the artist sharing a cigarette with his mother.
The 35-year-old artist named Elin Skarin relied on the items that the audience threw in the cage during her 73-hour bizarre performance. A camping toilet, some toilet paper and a microphone were thrown into the cage first. Then came various items, from food to beer bottles, from pillows to clothes. At the end of last month, footage of Skarin’s three-day adventure in the cage was also released.
