THE NEW CREATIVES
Features
Art as resistance. Art as innovation. Art as delirious escape. In an age of “alternative facts,” we need it all—and the artists and designers on these pages deliver, using everything from acrylic paint to their own bodies in the service of pushing the boundaries of beauty
Natalie White
On a steamy New York City summer night in 2015, Natalie White stripped down in the middle of abustling Bowery art gallery and stepped inside a Plexiglas box, its floor carpeted with an American flag. This performance piece marked the beginning of “Natalie White for Equal Rights,” the feminist artist’s ongoing campaign aimed at renewing enthusiasm for the 94-year-old unratified Equal Rights Amendment.
The proposed legislation, which would constitutionally guarantee equal rights for women, died in Congress after failing to receive enough state ratifications. Had it succeeded, it would have been the first piece of inclusive women’s
rights legislation in U.S. history. Now White, who has modeled nude for more than 50 photographers and was the first American woman featured in French PLAYBOY, is using her body in her own artwork to help carry gender equality across the finish line.
“People don’t want a lecture about women’s rights,” she says, “but I want to get the message out. So I’m using my sexuality as a tool. I’m taking back something that normally belongs to somebody else and turning my most vulnerable self into something that is empowering.”
White’s work takes an unapologetic approach to nudity. Consider the giant clothes-free selfportraits currently on view at Miami’s Bill
Brady Gallery. Last June, she debuted a bronze sculpture of herself—naked but for combat boots and holding an American flag. She also staged a march from New York to Washington, D.C. Upon arrival, she painted E.R.A. NOW in front of the U.S. Capitol. She was jailed, tried and ultimately convicted of “defacing public or private property.” Given the goal, few would say her crime was unjustified. White’s efforts have turned her into something of a cause celebre; Patricia Arquette and Lizzy Jagger testified in her favor. “If women want equal rights, we have to stop asking for them and start demanding them,” White says. “And if politicians won’t support us, we won’t support them.”—Liz Suman
