Aliza Shvarts

Aliza Shvarts is a student at Yale University in the United States who attracted extensive media attention in 2008 for a controversial senior performance art project.

On April 17, 2008, the Yale Daily News printed an article detailing the process by which Ms. Shvarts inseminated herself artificially as many times as possible over the course of nine months, during which she also induced abortions using abortifacient drugs. The exhibition of the project allegedly featured video recordings of the forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process. Shvarts declared that the goal of the project was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body.

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

Several hours after the initial story broke and a firestorm of press coverage brought down the Yale Daily News website, Yale College issued a press release affirming that the miscarriages and exhibit were performance art. In the press release, the university spokesperson revealed that rather than the alleged cube of miscarried remains, the performance had consisted in the invention of the story of their creation. "Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," it read. "Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."

Previous artwork by Ms. Shvarts was published in Yale University student publication Dimensions: Undergraduate Journal of Art and Art History. Her 2006 piece, entitled Disarticulation, appeared in the Fall 2006 issue; it was a sculpture composed of plaster, vaseline, towels, rubber bands, and latex gloves.

Prior to studying at Yale, Shvarts was a student at the Buckley School in Los Angeles, where she won an award for "good leadership and good citizenship". Her announcement of the art project was hailed by science fiction author Charles Stross as the "most inspired publicity-stunt debut in the art world since Damien Hirst." Warren Ellis concurred, claiming that Shvarts "might be the first “great” conceptual artist of the internet age."

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