AT ART BASEL, OONA ASKED: IS THE ARTIST JUST ANOTHER PRODUCT?

Standing topless in cow hooves and holding a carton of milk in front of her body, anonymous artist OONA staged a silent guerrilla performance at the entrance to Art Basel. Thirty-three minutes later, police removed her from the square. Titled Milking the Artist II, the work examined the growing pressures placed on artists to remain constantly visible, productive, and marketable. By presenting herself as both laborer and commodity, OONA asked an uncomfortable question at the heart of today’s art world: what happens when the artist becomes the product?

“The artist is a cow. Asked to be endlessly visible, endlessly available, and endlessly productive.” – OONA

On Wednesday, 17 June, OONA presented Milking the Artist II, a 33-minute guerrilla performance in Messeplatz, the public square at the entrance to Art Basel, one of the world’s most influential art fairs. Standing topless in cow hooves and holding a carton of milk before her body, OONA assumed the figure of the dairy cow, a body whose worth is measured by its capacity to produce. Milking the Artist II collapsed distinctions between artist and commodity, labor and spectacle, and subject and product.

 

The performance unfolded entirely in silence. No audience participation was invited, and no explanation was offered. OONA remained motionless until police intervened and removed her from the square. Reflecting on the intervention, the artist noted: “The police were more upset about my facial covering, my veil, than my breasts.”

Drawing on a lineage of feminist performance art, Milking the Artist II uses the body as a site through which systems of power become visible. Rather than presenting the body as an image to be consumed, the work positions it as evidence of the often invisible demands placed upon artistic production: the expectation that artists continuously generate work, attention, visibility, and economic value.

“I wanted to ask what happens when the artist stops presenting work and presents herself as the thing being worked,” OONA explains.

 

The performance also engages the legacy of feminist artists who have challenged the relationship between authorship, representation, and the female body. “It goes back to Carolee Schneemann,” OONA says. “Can the female artist be both the image and the maker?”

Milking the Artist II builds upon the original Milking the Artist, first performed during Art Basel Miami Beach in 2022 by OONA and Lori Baldwin. In that work, the artists auctioned a glass of OONA’s breast milk, which sold for a winning bid of $200,000, extending their ongoing investigation into the commodification of artistic labor, the body, and systems of value. Through Milking the Artist II, OONA continues her examination of the economies that shape artistic production, asking what remains of artistic agency when the artist herself becomes the product.

 

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