Artist's Fury After 'Female Beauty' Exhibition Combatting Negative Body Image Is Denied By Police | HuffPost Life

Do You See This Artist's Photos Of Naked Women As 'Indecent'?

Natasha Hinde— The Huffington Post UK

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An artist's work designed to combat negative self image has been closed down by police, because it featured photos of naked women.

Mathilde Grafström photographs nude women as a way of fighting negative body image among women.

Her photographs were set to be displayed in Copenhagen’s Nytorv square, however police denied permission for the exhibition to be shown on the grounds that it is "indecent".

Grafström said the police's actions are "totally reprehensible" and has since filed a complaint against them.

Mathilde Grafström's 'Female Beauty' exhibition shows women who would not be deemed as traditional models in natural settings. For example, climbing a tree, walking in a field or sitting in shallow water.

She said that she shoots naked models as a way to fight her own feelings of insecurity, and help other women do the same.

"I think my hips and breasts are too small," she wrote on her website. "Sometimes when my boyfriend is looking at my body, I think that I'm unattractive."

She said that it's these negative thoughts about her body that make her "less beautiful and unfree", and attributed her negative self image to not feeling good enough, in the eyes of her parents, growing up.

Grafström added: "It's important for me that my models understand that the pictures I want to make of her, is not about how she looks physically, but about the life energy and beauty she contains."

Since her exhibition was disallowed by police, Grafström has hit out at their double standards.

She said that photos featuring naked breasts were still allowed on Copenhagen's buses. The photographs form part of an advertisement for a plastic surgery clinic.

Grafström told HuffPost UK Lifestyle: "I am shocked that society has become so conservative that my art has been made illegal. I don't like this development and I am of course fighting against it by filing a complaint to the police. I am waiting to hear their answer.

"There is also a double standard here in Denmark, where nudity in advertising is legal, but art is getting censored."

She told Denmark's TV2: "I don't understand that my pictures can be offensive. They show something you see when you change clothes at a swimming pool.

"It's totally reprehensible. Total suppression of my art."

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[H/T Independent]

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