WASHINGTON — After the National Park Service rejected an activist group’s plans to install a 45-foot statue of a naked woman on the National Mall, the same group now wants to install a 26-foot digital portrait of a naked woman.
Park service spokesperson Mike Litterst says the draft permit has been submitted and will be reviewed in the upcoming week.
The digital piece, if approved, would be part of a three-day “Catharsis on the Mall” festival, starting Nov. 10.
Twenty-seven women submitted nude photos of themselves with their hands over their heart and stomach, which an artist then combined and manipulated into a single woman, according to The Washington Post.
The Washington Post also reports that the digital piece will be displayed on two sides of a scaffold at the event. Women who attend the festival will be able to take photos of themselves that will then be morphed and projected onto the digital piece.
Organizers had previously stated that the rejected 45-foot statue had been meant to symbolize “a woman standing in her strength and power… expressing her humanity; how she feels when she is safe, when she can just be.”
The statue was rejected due to worries that it would damage the Mall’s turf and soil, but the organizers of the event claim that the permit had been approved, and that the park service had made a last-minute retraction.
