‘Appropriation Art’ or ‘Revenge Porn’? The Subject of a Richard Prince Instagram Portrait Slams the Artist’s Use of Her Image

An exhibition of Richard
Prince’s portraits at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art has
renewed controversy over the artist’s use of appropriation after the
subject of one of his latest Instagram works spoke out against the
appearance of her image in the show without her
consent. 

The subject of the work, Zoë
Ligon, a Detroit-based sex educator and owner of a sex toy store,
is not the first to object to Prince’s “New Portraits” series.
After the works were first shown at Gagosian Gallery in 2014, many
of the subjects voiced their concerns, and at least five lawsuits
were filed, according to the New York
Times. 

Ligon says that she is a
survivor of childhood sexual abuse and suffers from PTSD, and that
her “sexy selfies” are a way of reclaiming her own sexualized
image. When Prince used one of Ligon’s posts, in which she appears
in a red bra, she says she felt “violated” by the artist and the
museum, and that the incident has damaged her mental
health.

“My being harmed only
contributes to the ‘art’ of it all, and this resembles revenge porn
and harassment more than anything else,” Ligon tells Artnet
News. 

In a statement, the museum’s
director, Elysia Borowy-Reeder, says she offered to remove the work
from the exhibition when she first heard about the concerns, but
Ligon declined. Ligon countered that the museum should either
remove all the works in the exhibition, or engage with her
objections more carefully within the exhibition’s
programming.

In her statement, Borowy-Reeder
says that the purpose of the exhibition is precisely to raise
questions about ownership. “This is a very relevant discussion,”
she writes. “Is social media empowering people or co-opting
artistic production? Where do our expectations and perceptions
around privacy and consent lead us when using social media? What
are you to consenting to when posting? Is all photography
exploitative?”

The museum director also
announced that there will be a talk about the works by Brian
Wallis, a faculty member at Bard College and former chief curator
at New York’s International Center of Photography.

Ligon says that this response is
not good enough. “Having a single speaker who is a white man from
New York is not an effective way to engage the Detroit community in
a conversation about this,” she says. “Had they curated the show
with a diverse panel that included speakers outside of the New York
art and literary world, it would have the potential to accomplish
MOCAD’s stated goals.”

After she spoke out publicly
about the exhibition, Ligon requested on Instagram that the museum
make a “large” donation to the Sex Worker Outreach Project, since
her original post was about the criminalization of sex work and
harm reduction. Ligon says that the museum has neither made the
donation nor changed its programming surrounding the exhibition,
calling the whole affair an “egregious abuse of financial and
social power.”

“This is appropriation, but it
is also expropriation—the seizure of property for an intended
public benefit, except it is the wealthy one-percenter art world
which benefits in this case,” Ligon says, “not the
public.” While Prince
has historically sold these artworks, a museum spokesman told
Artnet News that the work is destined for Prince’s Ryder Road
Foundation, and will not be sold commercially. 

Prince did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post ‘Appropriation Art’ or ‘Revenge Porn’? The Subject
of a Richard Prince Instagram Portrait Slams the Artist’s Use of
Her Image appeared first on artnet News.