Editor’s Be aware: The next story incorporates mentions of sexual assault and harassment. To achieve the Nationwide Sexual Assault Hotline, name 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to online.rainn.org.
An artist who carried out nude throughout Marina Abramović’s 2010 retrospective on the Museum of Fashionable Artwork (MoMA) in Manhattan is suing the museum, alleging that exhibition employees didn’t adequately shield him from a number of situations of sexual assault. John Bonafede, who carried out in Abramović’s “Imponderabilia” (1977/2010), claims that he was subjected to a number of situations of nonconsensual groping by patrons and that MoMA “didn’t take corrective motion” to guard the performers and to “stop additional sexual assaults from occurring.”
Hyperallergic has contacted MoMA, Marina Abramović, and Bonafede’s lawyer for remark.
For “Imponderabilia,” Bonafede and a feminine performer have been required to face throughout from one another, nude and fully immobile with locked gazes, on the threshold of a slender passageway that museum guests have been inspired to go by means of to traverse between the sixth-floor museum galleries. All through his involvement within the efficiency work, Bonafede alleges that he endured seven situations of museum guests, whom he specified have been all “older males,” groping or deliberately grazing his genitals and that he witnessed his feminine counterpart being assaulted as effectively. (The feminine performer shouldn’t be a plaintiff within the present lawsuit.)
Previous to the exhibition opening, Bonafede outlined that he and several other different efficiency artists employed to take part within the Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Current (2010) retrospective attended a preparatory retreat at Abramović’s Upstate New York residence. Through the retreat, Bonafede expressed that current MoMA employees and Abramović herself instilled a “robust it out” tradition when speaking the potential for attendee transgressions in opposition to performers, with Abramović citing examples of being assaulted throughout her personal endurance performances all through her profession.
Bonafede recalled that he didn’t report the primary incident of sexual misconduct he skilled at the start of the exhibition, stating that he opted to maintain his head down after one performer allegedly had their contract terminated after the opening evening of the retrospective for being unable to stay completely immobile.
He did report the next 4 incidents, and one other was reported by a MoMA safety guard who witnessed the assault in opposition to Bonafede in actual time, in line with the lawsuit.
Assaults in opposition to the exhibition performers have been well-documented and extensively reported by quite a lot of main news outlets all through the retrospective. The museum publicly acknowledged that it was “effectively conscious of the challenges posed by having nude performers within the galleries,” and shortly developed a codified signaling system for performers to depend on in the event that they felt unsafe or threatened by attendees throughout the present.
Nonetheless, Bonafede alleges that whereas the museum guests who assaulted him have been instantly ejected from the premises, and that one among them who was a company member had his membership revoked, the museum didn’t present him with their identities.
Bonafede’s go well with was filed in accordance with the New York Adult Survivors Act that eliminated the statute of limitations for sexual assault litigations for a 12 months from November 2022 to November 2023.