Art student admits she faked controversial project

A Yale University student's senior art project, which she said documented her bleeding during repeated self-induced abortions, sparked a protest on campus, an outcry on the Internet and debates over morality, medicine, art and academia.

And — it was all faked. Senior Aliza Shvarts told Yale officials Thursday that she didn't get pregnant and didn't have abortions. But that didn't stop an outpouring of emotion as the story spread.

Earlier she said she had herself artificially inseminated as often as possible for much of the past year and then took legal, herbal abortifacient drugs and filmed herself in her bathtub cramping and bleeding from the miscarriages.

She said her work would include video, a sculpture and a spoken piece describing what she had done.

She declined to comment Thursday.

She presented a mock-up of the project in class last week and told the Yale Daily News she wanted to provoke debate about the relationship between art and the human body, but that the intention of the piece was not to scandalize anyone.

Well, it did.

Within hours after the article ran Thursday in the student newspaper, blogs were full of angry reactions, including horror that so many fetuses were apparently aborted, revulsion at the graphic nature of the piece, shock that someone would risk her health in such a way and general disdain for art and academia. (One blogger offered an alternative installation: Vomit in Sock.)

Students gathered near the administration building to protest Thursday afternoon, said sophomore John Behan, president of Choose Life at Yale (CLAY). "CLAY and the entire Yale community, I think, are appalled at what was a serious lapse in taste on the part of the student and the Yale art department."

Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Thursday: "Ms. Shvarts ... stated to three senior Yale University officials today ... 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.

"She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art."

To many, her piece symbolizes the worst of art — shock without substance — and of academia, with professors encouraging useless introspection.

Within hours, photos of her in leopard-print shorts and fringed boots were on the Internet, with blog headlines such as "Aliza Shvarts is One Sick Puppy," and comments furious, disgusted and bitter.

Juan Castillo, a senior art major who saw Shvarts present the work in progress, said by phone that her artwork had been oversimplified and sensationalized. "It's a much more complex project," he said. "It's supposed to challenge the mythology of the body," he said.

"I think she was definitely trying to spark conversation ... But I don't know if she meant it to get this crazy, this out of control."

Staff writer Philip Rucker and researcher Meg Smith contributed to this story. Amila Golic reported from New Haven.