Nude Nite: Orlando

After all of my living room speeches (or online, for that matter) concerning the conservative south and art, I think I found some satisfaction over my weekend in Orlando and the fabulous Nude Nite I was invited to participate in. Nude Nite took place over a few nights (Thursday-Saturday) and I was highly impressed by the participation of local, national, and international artists. Reminiscent of my last weekend at Dodekapus, the event consisted of a range of art mediums, including performance, dance, and installation. Several hundreds (if not thousands) of people were in attendance over the course of the 3 evenings at a cost of $20 per ticket.

Now, again, this makes me first wonder why we don't have more art events/celebrations such as this in Atlanta. And it also gives me some insight into the interest of art patrons when it comes to the nude form.

Well, let me correct myself... Considering that I did get my male nudes invited into this thing and they did go as far as to include the penis into the show...it is still shocking to me (or, maybe not so much) that out of hundreds of artworks, I was A. 1 of maybe 3 male nudes and B. 1 of 2 penis-revealing artworks. All of the above, pretty astonishing when you sit and think about it. Although, I would have to say that I'm not necessarily of the majority by sitting and thinking about the place of the male penis in the Art-o-sphere. Nonetheless, it's extremely important to bring it up because we need to understand how this binary came to life in the first place and why or how it is sustaining itself.

As a bystander of my own photographs, I received the pleasure of hearing critics and comments of my own work. "Is that a? It is!","It's a...It's heart...wait, that's a sac, a penis!", "That's a woman, right? Well, that's hair.. and a..yes, a MAN!"

Among my personal favorites? "That over there... that's what I'm getting my girlfriend for valentines day."

So, all in all, I would conclude that there was a general reaction of joking, laughing, surprise, some disgust, some staring, and mostly shock. Which brings me to my next point: is it really funny? And is it really that shocking? Well to me personally, not really either of those things. But that is of course not the perspective of the billions of other people on the planet, in America, and especially not in the South. I don't know that I find it humorous that there is a room full of nude women on the walls and walking around (let me note the trail of photographing men that followed them) and one artist completing the latter percentage of male nudes in the entire facility.

And why don't I find it shocking that there are large, colorful photographs of male nudes in this event dedicated to NUDE art? Because according to the other 99% of the room, its pretty evident who has been in control of the art market for the past.. well, always... and I think we are officially at a time that we can talk about why. Art history lesson in less than 5 seconds: men photographed nude women, women took back their image by photographing other nude women, then a few men decided to photograph a few nude men... and now? Well it shouldn't come to a big surprise that a woman would pick up and camera and photograph a nude man. But, I'm definitely not preaching to the choir on this one.

Nude Nite? Fun, entertaining, exciting. Happy to see people celebrating the nude form. Glad it's in the South. Wish it was in Atlanta. And wish it wasn't almost only women as the spectacle. Low and behold, these guys stood their ground:

And while I'm at it, a big thank you to Jake Zobrist, Liz Turner, and Sheila Craine for making this trip amazing!

Oh and if you didn't get the chance to make it to Orlando and you either really really want to see this show or you are a Tampa local, perhaps you want to vandalize my male nudes: Nude Nite, Tampa: March 3-5, 2011