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COMBO Street Art: Same Spectacle, New Meaning

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Filed under: Creative Activism, Culture Jamming and Reality Hacking

Culture Jamming Street Artist COMBO Stages Topless Spectacle in Paris
brooklynstreetart.com
July 18, 2013

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In the face of 21st Century misogyny and a general discomfort with public nipples of the female variety, a male street artist named COMBO just staged a high profile half naked protest with wheat-paste, brushes, and breasts in Paris on July 14. Reinterpreting the painter Delacroix”™s Liberty Leading the People that commemorated the July Revolution of 1830, COMBO brought the famous topless symbol of Liberty into the streets of 2013 by way of tribute to a brash new feminist movement that is appearing more often across Europe.

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“By hijacking such an iconic piece of art,” says the twenty something art director cum Street Artist, “I want to denunciate the discrimination and other misogynistic behavior that women still suffer too often and to pay a tribute to the activists”™ fight.” The activists in this case are people like Inna Shevshenko, the Gen Y leader of Femen, a theatrical and warrior-like group of women who advocate in public displays of power and bare chests to address issues like sexism, misogyny, homophobia, religious hypocrisy, and sex trafficking. (more…)