A Los Angeles artist is planning to display uncensored nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities whose intimate images were recently stolen and then posted online.
The exhibition by the artist known as XVALA will start Oct. 30 at the Cory Allen Contemporary Art “Showroom” in St. Petersburg, Florida, the gallery announced this week.
Excuse me? You can’t “display” stolen photographs. They’re stolen.
It’s like buying a fenced Rembrandt stolen from the Rijksmuseum and then announcing plans to display it in an exhibition in a few weeks. The cops will be the first in line on opening day.
The show could test the boundaries between art and privacy, freedom of speech and content ownership. Lawrence, for one, warned in a statement that authorities …
… will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos …
The hack was being investigated by the FBI.
XVALA told us, “I hope we don’t need an attorney.” But he said he definitely plans to move forward with the exhibition, with the backing of the gallery.
It’s like breaking into your neighbor’s house and then announcing plans to “display” the stolen goods in a yard sale.
The photos were stolen.
The gallery is helping itself to someone else’s stolen photos. Its “backing” is the backing of a thief.
“I’m taking them off the internet and putting them into a new medium that is transformative,” he said. “I’ll be using them as commentary.”
The artist says he hasn’t entirely decided yet which pilfered images he’ll display, but that Lawrence’s and Johansson’s are shoo-ins because both women have admitted that the photos are theirs.
You can’t just “take” whatever you want off the internet. The fact that it’s on the internet doesn’t mean you can just help yourself to it. It’s not the free box at a garage sale.
Lawrence has said (why “admitted”? she didn’t do anything wrong) the photos are hers, and that they were stolen. This XVALA schmuck is planning to display Lawrence’s photos that are not his to display and that she doesn’t want displayed and that are stolen.
The art show is titled “No Delete,” and it’s part of an ongoing “Fear Google”-themed series that showcases “the artist’s seven-year collection of images found on Google of celebrities in their most vulnerable and private moments,” according to a statement from the gallery:
In 2011, XVALA posted the leaked nude images of actress Scarlett Johansson throughout the streets in Los Angeles with “Fear Google” logo covering her intimate areas.
The photos from that collection were snapped by paparazzi or stolen by hackers, XVALA acknowledges, and that’s part of his point…
Oh, that’s just fucking disgusting. It’s just one more way someone has found to degrade women and ignore their explicit strongly-stated wishes. Fuck his “point”; he’s making it with photos that belong to other people who don’t want them used. What a pig.