Artist Spencer Tunick, known for his large-scale installations using live nude volunteers, just presented his latest project in sight of Cleveland’s Republican National Convention. On July 17, Tunick gathered 100 women and asked them to stand nude, holding mirrors reflecting Cleveland’s sky and landscape surrounding them.
Titled “Everything She Says Means Everything,” this installation is to serve a dual role as a celebration of women’s embodiment of nature as well as a political act reflecting on the “repressive rhetoric” that the artist claims the Republican Party has employed against women and minorities. “The woman becomes the future and the future becomes the woman,” Tunick writes on the project page.
Photo courtesy of Spencer Tunick Cleveland’s website.
The 100 women were selected from a pool of around 1800 women who volunteered for the opportunity, based on submitted photographs. While this selection of women by a male artist might raise some eyebrows, it seems that these measures were taken to ensure diversity, as this was one of the main goals of the project.
The mirrors are meant to communicate the idea that we are all a reflection of ourselves, each other, and of the world around us. The installation creates an artistic statement using one of “the most controversial subjects in the presidential race—a woman’s body,” according to the project’s website, which calls its participants “women art warriors.”
While this latest shoot does not match some of Tunick’s previous work in size, it continues a legacy of political installations by the artist. Tunick has been arrested several times due to his artworks, and has staged other political shoots such as his largest project in six years, which gathered 6,000 nude women in Bogota’s main square in response to Colombia’s nearing peace deal with leftist rebels of FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Photo courtesy of Spencer Tunick Cleveland’s website.