A New York art gallery currently showing an exhibition that aims to de-sexualize the concept of nudity had its Instagram account flagged for … posting an artwork depicting a naked body, according to Hyperallergic.
Nudity is not Radical!, a group show at Kravets Wehby Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, is coming face-to-face with the premise of its conception as the artists in the exhibition navigate agency versus approval through the naked figure.
Gallery Director Emily Saltman, who curated the show, shared that it was born from her experience seeing Édouard Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) in person for the first time in the Manet/Degas show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this fall. Reflecting on how so many of the painting’s initial viewers were scandalized by the presentation of its subject, who was modeled after a sex worker, and by the foreground inclusion of a Black woman, Saltman said she knew what she had to do.
Nudity is not Radical!, on view through February 3, is exactly what it says — a presentation of the nude figure beyond a sexualized context. Across painting and sculpture, the objectively benign exhibition works tackle themes like gender identity and race, body image and athleticism, and health and consciousness. Perhaps the most provocative work is Alexandra Rubinstein’s painting “The Venus Trap” (2023), portraying a nude male figure and painted using the artist’s menstrual blood.
And it was “The Venus Trap,” or just a crop of it, that set off Instagram’s algorithm police. A few days before the opening reception, Saltman made and posted a “cheeky” edit of the work as an invite card on the social media platform and got an immediate notice that the post “could limit [the gallery account’s] reach with non-followers.” Then, when gallery owner Marc Wehby shared the same edit on his personal Instagram account, Meta instantly removed the post.
