Swiss performance artist Milo Moiré is known for pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable to do in public. Last year, she was arrested for taking naked selfies at the Eiffel Tower. For other projects, she has walked around a museum naked with a baby and expelled paint from her vagina. Her latest project has also been rather controversial: She asked people to touch her vagina in London's Trafalgar Square.
For "Mirror Box", she wore a trapezoidal skirt made of mirrors with an entrance at the front covered by a red curtain and invited people via a megaphone to reach in and touch her vagina. The piece, she explained in a press release, was inspired by the New Years Eve sexual assaults in Cologne. "I am standing here today for women’s rights and sexual self-determination," she said. "Women have a sexuality, just like men have one. However, women decide for themselves when and how they want to be touched and when they don’t.”
By assertively asking people to touch her body, she aimed to demonstrate what a consensual act looks like. The mirror represents the cultural view of a woman's body as a mirror of male desire, and by reflecting viewers back to them, it makes them participants in the exchange rather than mere onlookers acting upon her as an object.
The piece landed Moiré in jail for 24 hours, after which she had to appear in court and pay a four-digit fine. She noted that in Amsterdam, the police didn't take issue with her nudity during the same performance. They just had her register it because they were concerned the megaphone might disturb others.
She said she hopes the UK remains in the EU but wishes "the laws within the EU would be regulated uniformly."
