Forbidden Freedom – Veiled Truth
01 The Chalice & The Wand – #FreeTheChalice / #FreeTheWand
Symbols of power, origin, and mystery.
The wand rises, the chalice receives – both vessels for projection, taboo, and concealment.
Courbet, Michelangelo, and the contemporary transformation in Menangkap Apa open this space anew:
not as possession, but as an invitation to liberation.
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902: Gustave Courbet; The Origin of the World
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Paris, France; 1866; Oil on Canvas
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Attribution: Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons (Photo: Yann, 2006)
#FreeTheNipple, #FreeTheBreastEye, #FreeTheChalice, #ArtNotPorn, #UncensoredArt
Aspect | Description |
Unveiled | Courbet’s painting depicts the female sex – the chalice – with radical directness. No allegory, no distraction, but the “origin” itself. The work appears almost photorealistic: Realism, things so as they are. |
Veiled | In the pixelated version only an amorphous surface remains. The detail disappears – and with it the provocation, the radicality, the history. |
Stigma and Reception | The Origin of the World was branded obscene and pornographic immediately in 1866. For decades it remained hidden, in the possession of private collectors, and was not publicly exhibited.
With hashtags like #FreeTheNipple or #FreeTheBreastEye, it is still seen today as a touchstone in the debate about the body, morality, and the public sphere. |
Meaning | Courbet made a radical artistic statement against veiling and for visibility. The painting is a touchstone: what happens when truth is no longer shown symbolically, but directly? |
💧 They say it is too much – yet it shows only what everyone knows.
Isn’t there a French children’s song that sings of this part of the body,
which for children is the gateway into open life?
And is it not a part of the body that belongs to us like any other?
Veiling does not erase reality, but honesty.
And perhaps it is not the image they fear, but the intimacy it creates.
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1100: Ingo Lorenz; David (Diptych)
.jpg/picture-200?_=19981109660 "1100: Ingo Lorenz; David (Diptych)")
Berlin, Germany; 2025; Photography (at the Piazza della Signoria in Florence)
(after Michelangelo Buonarroti, David, 1501–1504, Florence, Galleria dell’Accademia)
In private collection of the artist, archive of the M&I ArtMuseums, Berlin, Germany
Attribution: © Ingo Lorenz, M&I ArtMuseum
#FreeTheWand, #ArtNotPorn, #UncensoredArt
The diptych reveals a field of tension between presence and intimacy:
In the left image, the hand points to what is visible, almost as a commentary on the public space where Michelangelo’s David has stood for centuries – admired, contested, instrumentalized.
In the right image, however, a playful erotic moment emerges, only to vanish under pixelation. The veiling demonstrates how easily human closeness becomes taboo – how quickly the joy of life is declared “offensive.”
Aspects | Left: Demonstrative Presence | Right: Erotic Stigmatisation |
Unveiled | The body region is visible, the hand points demonstratively – presence in public space. | The original gesture was playful, erotic touch – intimate, human. |
Veiled | Light pixelation: presence is not erased, but marked as a “problem zone.” | Radical pixelation: the erotic moment is erased, intimacy withdrawn. |
Stigma and Reception | Historically: David himself was subject to moral debates – from shame culture to the symbol of male virtue. | Contemporary: Digital platforms and moralism stigmatize eroticism as “offensive,” even when affectionate or playful. |
Meaning | Censorship shows gradations: presence remains, but with a mark of shame. | Censorship erases intimacy, makes closeness invisible – denying us an expression of humanity. |
💧 Do you see?
Sometimes a mere pointing finger casts a shadow on what has always been.
And sometimes a gentle, playful touch is already too much.
Yet the truth remains: closeness is no scandal, but a gift.
And you know – where I come from, it is nothing unusual to touch each other playfully.
No more, no less, just closeness – as natural as a smile.
1101 - Mona Syarif-Lorenz, Ingo Lorenz (ed.); Menangkap Apa
.jpg/picture-200?_=1998f7ac1f8 "1101 - Mona Syarif-Lorenz, Ingo Lorenz (ed.); Menangkap Apa")
Berlin, Germany; 2024; Photo Collage
In private collection of the artist, archive of the M&I ArtMuseums, Berlin, Germany
Attribution: © Mona Syarif-Lorenz / Ingo Lorenz collaboration, M&I ArtMuseums
#FreeTheCalice, #FreeTheWand, #UncensoredArt
Aspect | Description |
Unveiled | The hand embraces, holds, captures – yet leaves open whether it is protection, possession, or devotion. Body and gesture merge into a symbol that resists clear definition. |
Veiled | The pixelation transforms the gesture into emptiness. What might be caught is no longer visible – and thus no longer speakable. The erotic, the ambiguous, is neutralized. |
Stigma and Reception | (Not yet documented – work has remained in private collection, with no public reception so far.) |
Meaning | The work explores whether we can bear forms, gestures, and symbols – or whether moralism silences them. |
Perhaps this is the greatest freedom: not knowing what is caught.
A bird? A chalice? A wand?
Or just a feeling.
As long as we do not veil it, we are still allowed to ask.
#FreeTheChalice & #FreeTheWand – since 2025, M&I ArtMuseum, Berlin, Germany, Exhibition & Discourse
New and revolutionary digital campaign, social media
Symbolics of even more-tabooing and equality
With #FreeTheChalice and #FreeTheWand, the exhibition expands the discourse:
- The Origin of the World – chalice – once veiled as scandal, today a symbol of female self-determination.
- David's wand – monumentalized as heroic, yet censored in its intimate detail.
- Menangkap Apa – where chalice and wand merge, androgyny becomes a gentle gesture of liberation.
Both face each other as poles of the same truth: that corporeality, whether female or male, is no flaw but an expression of life.
Aspect | #FreeTheChalice | #FreeTheWand | Synthesis |
Unveiled | Courbet’s The Origin of the World shows the female body without disguise – a scandal in its time, today a symbol of visibility. | Michelangelo’s David embodies the male as an ideal image – heroic, nude, displayed in public. | Menangkap Apa depicts the amalgamation of chalice and wand – not a juxtaposition, but a tender gesture of unity. |
Veiled | For decades, the work was hidden as “indecent” – from private collections to digital censorship. | In close-ups or playful appropriations, the body region is often censored or stigmatized. | Precisely because traditional categories are becoming blurred, the work eludes simple censorship. It does not show “either/or”, but something in between that is more difficult to grasp. |
Stigma and Reception | Once condemned as obscene, later reinterpreted in feminist discourse: the “chalice” as a source of life, desire, and freedom. | From a Renaissance symbol of freedom to today’s pixelations on social media: male nudity is both monument and taboo. | When binary symbols are dissolved, society often reacts with uncertainty: neither scandal nor monument, but rather unsettling openness. |
Meaning | #FreeTheChalice stands for liberating the feminine from taboo and shame, for recognition instead of stigmatisation. | #FreeTheWand calls for the visibility of the male body beyond shame or heroization – for a culture that does not suppress intimacy and corporeality but embraces them as natural. | Menangkap Apa stands for overcoming opposites: #FreeTheChalice and #FreeTheWand become a common symbol – liberation through fusion. |
💧 A chalice, a wand – nothing more is needed to unsettle morality.
Why fear what has given us life, what sustains and unites us?
Where I come from, it is natural: we look, we touch, we share – without shame, without scandal.
And Luis? Well … he too would have loved to drink from a chalice.
Perhaps out of curiosity. Perhaps out of desire. Perhaps because a chalice is more than just an image – it is an invitation.
And therein lies the truth: that desire and love are no transgression, but gifts.
