Image via Complex Original
Performance art might be the most bizarre and frightening act of creativity on the planet. Between the viral videos, public indecency charges, and oddly designed props, performance art has developed a reputation as being a remarkably strange form that many people simply don’t take seriously. Despite the controversy and skepticism that surrounds the medium, at its best, performance art is an engaging presentation that promotes a strong message about the current state of our society.
The Weirdest Performance Art Recently includes all the most outrageous performance art pieces from this year and late 2013, including a woman dropping paint-filled eggs out of her vagina, a man parading around London in a raw chicken suit, and someone living inside a bear carcass for 13 days. Check out this list, and prepared to be shocked, surprised, and totally freaked out.
Coq/Cock
Artist: Stephen Cohen
Date: Sept. 2013
Performance artist Stephen Cohen arrived at the Eiffel Tower dressed like a bird in a garter, tights, and long red gloves. The worst part: he had no pants on and had a rooster attached to his penis with a white ribbon. Although Cohen is widely known for his controversial performance pieces, this particular one landed him in trouble with law enforcement. The South African artist had to appear in court on charges of sexual exhibitionism in March.
Casting Off My Womb
Artist: Casey Jenkins
Date: Oct. 2013 - Nov. 2013
Australian artist Casey Jenkins is very crafty although some find her practice of knitting from her vagina downright disturbing. Jenkins' 28-day performance art piece, entitled Casting Off My Womb, involved the artist inserting a new ball of wool into her vagina each day to knit during her performance. As of this month, the artist's video has surpassed five million YouTube hits.
Frosting a Cake on the Subway
Artist: Bettina Behjat Banayan
Date: Feb. 19, 2014
Performance artist and culinary student Bettina Behjat Banayan is no stranger to performing strange acts on the subway. This past February she received both confused and friendly glances after she started to frost a homemade cake in the middle of her commute. After she was done frosting and decorating her cake, she proceeded to cut and hand out slices. While many refused to take a piece, the few that did enjoyed the delectable dessert.
In Orbit
Artists: Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder
Date: Feb. 28 - April 5, 2014
Brooklyn performance artists Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder spent 10 days living in an over-sized hamster wheel. Since it is a moveable wheel, the only way this could work is if they are in complete balance, with one person living on top of the wheel and the other living at the bottom.
Performance Artist Eats His Voting Ballot
Artist: Víctor “Crack” Rodríguez
Date: March 8, 2014
In March 2014, Víctor Rodríguez waltzed into a polling station, loudly stated, “This is an artist action,” and then ate half of his voting ballot before casting the chewed remains. Police accused the artist of electoral fraud, a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.
Embrace: The Utopia of Hugging for 20 Minutes
Artists: Gao Qiang and Gao Zhen
Date: March 9 - April 12, 2014
Two artists held a performance in which 60 volunteer strangers hugged in front of an audience for 20 minutes straight. The brothers began the project in 1999, presenting their interactive performance art piece in various galleries and public spaces worldwide. The project, which is internationally recognized as a significant and profound work, finally came to RH Contemporary Art in New York in March 2014.
Vomit Painting on Lady Gaga
Artist: Millie Brown
Date: March 13, 2014
17-year-old art students often spend their semesters learning self-portrait drawing the use of positive and negative space, but when performance artist Millie Brown was 17, she was practicing how to vomit paint all over a canvas. Now 27, Brown is known worldwide for her controversial vomit paintings, chiefly from her guest appearance during Lady Gaga's performance of "Swine" at the SXSW festival in Texas, in which Brown drank a bottle of luminous green milk and preceded to vomit it all over Gaga's breasts. Brown has received much criticism from the public as well as celebrities for what many believe to be a disturbing act that glamorizes bulimia.
#IAMSORRY
Artist: Shia LaBeouf
Date: March 14, 2014
If anyone still had an ounce of respect for Shia LaBeouf, it was probably quashed with his strange and borderline plagiaristic art performance in early 2014. People gathered in mobs to observe LaBeouf in his #IAMSORRY performance at the Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles, which involved him sitting at a table with a bag on his head while he apologized to people who sat across from him. The show's clear connections to Marina Abramovic's highly revered The Artist Is Present performance brought LaBeouf and his performance art debut nothing but criticism.
Fire Angel
Artist: Walker Babington
Date: March 30, 2014
Babington set himself on fire in order to produce a piece of artwork, a scorched Fire Angel, on a wooden panel back in March 2014. The artist made certain that he was well protected before setting himself ablaze. He wore a fireproof ski mask-like hood with goggles along with clothes that were covered in a layer of fire-resistant gel. For 30 seconds, Babington burned in front of a large audience at an intersection in New Orleans. When he finally signaled for his assistants to douse the flames, the artist was hit with blasts from several fire extinguishers, the wooden panel was removed, and Babington made us all rethink making snow angles this winter.
PlopEgg Painting
Artist: Milo Moiré
Date: April 2014
During the Art Cologne Fair in Germany, Milo Moiré shocked crowds when she "gave birth" to a work of art by ejecting eggs filled with paint from her vagina onto a canvas. According to Moiré, the performance was "about the creation fear, the symbolic strength of the casual, and the creative power of the femininity." Moiré performed right on the street, where she straddled two platforms and released the paint capsules from her body onto a white canvas below her.
Living Inside a Taxidermy Bear
Artist: Abraham Poincheval
Date: April 1 - April 13, 2014
For two weeks, French artist Abraham Poincheval moved out of his home and shacked up inside the hollowed-out carcass of a bear in hopes of understanding his own physical limits and experiencing animal nature. The bear was placed in the center salon at the Musée de La Chasse et de la Nature in Paris. The artist kept basic items with him inside the carcass including, food, water, and leisure activities. To answer the most obvious question, yes, he did have access to a “bathroom.”
Sneaker Licking Performance Piece
Artists: Pinar Demirdag and Viola Renate
Date: May 2014
During the Gabber Expo in Paris, Pinar Demirdag and Viola Renate brought the underground subculture of sneakerslaves and foot fetishists to an international audience by making a sneakerslave lick and sniff their Nike Air Maxes. In an interview with Dazed, Renate talked about the duo's motivation for putting on such a bizarre performance: “We thought to bring back a subculture that was genuinely important for its time made it lose so much of its necessity and value. That’s why we decided to do something that made people feel very uncomfortable.”
Walking the Cabbage
Artist: Han Bing
Date: May 3, 2014
What was originally believed to be a new trend in China where teens were taking heads of cabbage on walks to combat loneliness and depression was later revealed to be a part of artist Han Bing's performance art project Walking the Cabbage, which began back in 2000. The performers were joined by a large audience as they walked their cabbages at this year's Midi Music Festival in Beijing. The project is a play on traditional and modern Chinese values. Traditionally, a full stock of cabbage for the winter was a symbol of material well being in China; whereas, now pure-bred pooches, fast cars, and other luxury items are have become signifiers of wealth.
Reenactment of The Origin of the World
Artist: Deborah de Robertis
Date: May 29, 2014
Back in May 2014, performance artist Deborah de Robertis gave museum-goers quite the eyeful when she journeyed into Paris' Museé d'Orsay, sat poised in front of Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World, and spread her legs to reveal her own origin of the world. In mimicking Courbet's classic painting of a woman's vagina, Robertis proved that open expression of sexuality is still considered taboo within the general population.
Performance Piece With Eggs and Glitter
Artist: Kira O’Reilly
Date: June 2014
In her latest act, performance artist Kira O'Reilly slowly moved her naked body over broken eggs and green glitter through RP14 Gallery. Throughout the four-hour work, the artist wanted to "generate bodily transformation" by covering her body in these unusual materials.
512 Hours
Artist: Marina Abramovic
Date: June 11 - Aug. 25, 2014
For her latest durational performance, Marina Abramovic: 512 Hours, the grandmother of performance art spent six days a week at the Serpentine Gallery in London, interacting with the public by doing absolutely nothing for 512 hours. In an interview with The Economist, the artist said she wanted visitors to “change consciousness,” to be in the moment, with her.
Mad Meds
Artist: Marni Kotak
Date: Aug. 2014
Marni Kotak, the performance artist who gave birth in a gallery back in 2011, has recently begun her newest project, and she's prepared to shock us all once again. Mad Meds, Kotak's latest venture, is a six-week-long performance in which the artist will stop taking a series of pills and anti-psychotic medication that she's been on since 2012. The project intends to address issues surrounding America's pharmaceutical industry.
FLESH
Artists: Victor Ivanov and Lewis G. Burton
Date: Aug. 2014
FLESH, an ongoing work designed by London-based performance artists Lewis G. Burton and Victor Ivanov, is the epitome of why people are so freaked out and often terrified by performance art. For the project, Burton is strolling around London suited up in a onesie made entirely of six-month-old chicken skins. The vomit-worthy outfit was sewn together by Ivanov, and throughout the month of August, Burton has been spotted sporting the suit in many of London's most popular areas. The duo hopes to send passersby a message about commodification and how chickens have become an integral part of our society.
36 Days
Artist: Zhou Jie
Date: Aug. 9 - Sept. 13, 2014
In Zhou Jie's latest exhibition, her day-to-day life is being put on display for the public. For 36 days, Zhou Jie is living in Beijing Now Gallery and sleeping on an unfinished single bed made of iron wire. Jie has a one-month supply of food, sets of clean clothes, a mobile phone, as well as a set of wire braided toys of her own creation.
Blood Campaign
Artist: Istvan Kantor
Date: Aug. 20, 2014
Canadian performance artist Istvan Kantor, also known as Monty Cantsin, targeted the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in accordance with his infamous Blood Campaign. The artist vandalized one of the exhibition walls behind Koons' famous Rabbit sculpture, forming the shape of an “X” in what was reportedly his own blood. This bizarre performance art series began in 1979 when Kantor first began experimenting with blood as a form of paint and splattering it inside museums and galleries worldwide. His reputation has earned him bans from many of the world's top museums.
Save the Date
Artist: Mischa Badasyan
Date: Aug. 2014 - Aug. 2015
For the next year, Mischa Badasyan will be having sex with a new male stranger everyday. The 26-year-old performance artist's latest venture is meant to explore society's ideas on sexuality, homosexuality, and modern hook-up culture. Badaysan intends to collect a souvenir to commemorate each of his experiences, which he will then turn into an installation. An HIV organization will be supplying Badasyan with condoms for the duration of the project.