Just when you think things couldn’t get any sicker, an art student at Yale artificially inseminated herself as many times as possible, induced abortions, and saved the results of her abortions as her senior art project. From the Yale Daily News:

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts” project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock ” saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it”s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

…

Art major Juan Castillo “08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result.

“I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn”t,” Castillo said. “I think that most people were very resistant to thinking about what the project was really about. [The senior-art-project forum] stopped being a conversation on the work itself.”

Castillo, you’re a sick idiot.

“I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity,” Shvarts said. “I think that I”m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.”

No, you poor, misguided girl — you’ve lowered the standard of the definition of art to its lowest point in history. This is not art but is rather a perversion of the worst kind and a crime against humanity.

The display of Schvarts” project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts” self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

…

Shvarts emphasized that she is not ashamed of her exhibition, and she has become increasingly comfortable discussing her miscarriage experiences with her peers.

I think that the lack of Shvartzs’ shame is the most disturbing part of the story. I realize that shame can often be used inappropriately, like making fun of the schoolgirl who is 15 pounds overweight. However, the fact that personal and societal shame is sometimes abused doesn’t mean that there is no such as a shameful act. People without cancer have been treated for the condition but that does not mean that cancer does not exist. Shvartz and a disturbing number of her classmates and members of society thinks that what she did was okay. It wasn’t.

I am amazed when I walk through a great museum and see brilliant masterpieces from the past. Masterpieces have not been produced very often over the last 75 years. Our society has defined the meaning of so low that art no longer has any meaning. Lately art has been used to shock, like Serrano’s photos and his most famous work, Piss Christ.

I somehow doubt that any artist is brave enough to put a statue of Mohammed in urine and call it Piss Mohammed. They know that they risk nothing by offending Christians.

Ari Shvarts is the epitome of shame, perversion, and the degradation of society.