French-Luxembourgish performance artist Deborah De Robertis has been cleared of sexual exhibitionism charges by Paris’s High Court.
The artist defended herself at a trial on Tuesday, October 18, after a complaint was filed by the Louvre regarding a controversial performance carried out in front of the Mona Lisa on September 24, which saw De Robertis expose her genitals.
The court ruled her actions did not constitute public exposure due to the absence of “the material element of the crime,” which is to say that spectators could not actually see her genitals because of her pubic hair. The court also acknowledged that the motivation for the offense was non-sexual in nature.
“The court has no legitimacy in deciding what is or is not art,” De Robertis asserted when speaking to artnet News, “but it has found that my work can not constitute an offense of sexual exhibitionism because of its political, activist, and artistic dimension.”
She went on to explain: “I show the genitals of women as they are, hairy and natural, and my nudity is not sexual because it refers to the pictorial nude.” Read more