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This is Your Last Week to See Artist Natalie White Make Sweet Love to Herself at the Hole
Cait Munro
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If you’ve passed by the Hole in New York recently, you may have noticed something unusual going on in the window of the gallery’s shop, Wallplay.
Artist Natalie White has staged an installation and performance called “Instant Gratification,” that addresses women’s rights, and onanism, via bold displays of the body.
The performance, Natalie White For Equal Rights, occurs randomly throughout the gallery’s hours, so be prepared to hang out for a little while. In it, White rests naked on a rumpled US flag installed inside a giant plexiglass box.
Photo: Courtesy Natalie White.
The installation is dedicated to raising awareness around the the need to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed constitutional change that would prohibit discrimination against women on the basis of their gender.
“Sex discrimination continues to limit equal opportunity and justice for women,” reads White’s statement on Wallplay’s website. “Economic inequality, pregnancy discrimination, violence against women, and other forms of discrimination against women and girls are pervasive and leave women without effective legal recourse.”
The performance is accompanied by several giant double-exposure Polaroid photos of the artist embracing herself.
In addition to creating her own artwork, White has served as a muse for several other New York-based artists. In 2013, Rox Gallery hosted “Who Shot Natalie White,” a provocative exhibition of photographs and portraits of White by Sean Lennon, Will Cotton, Spencer Tunick, and Peter Beard (who “discovered” White outside Bungalow 8 in Chelsea when she was a mere 17 years old).
Photo: Courtesy Natalie White.
The previous show was so scintillating it prompted the attention of the NYPD, who visited the gallery with the intention of shutting it down. But, the legend goes, they were so charmed by White, who took them on a topless tour of the exhibition, that the allowed it to stay open.
“Every beautiful woman should just bask in the glory of what she has,” White told Whitehot Magazine in 2013. “Humility is for when you’re dead.”
Photo: Courtesy Natalie White.
“Natalie White: Instant Gratification” will be on display at Wallplay until August 9.
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