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Officials Consider Placing Giant Naked Woman Statue On The Washington Mall

Vimeo Screengrab/Catharsis Onthemall)

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The National Parks Service (NPS) is considering whether to allow a group to erect a 45-foot-tall statue of a nude woman on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for several months this winter.

The sculpture, called “R-Evolution” and created by artist Marco Cochrane, would be the centerpiece of Catharsis on the Mall, an event that organizers hope will bring the ethos of Burning Man to the nation’s capital.

NPS has not made a decision on the nude sculpture, though it did waive a 40-foot height limit for the Catharsis application. It’s “plausible” that NPS will approve the statue for display from Nov. 10 to Nov. 12, when the Catharsis takes place, through March, NPS spokesman Mike Litterst told the Washington Post.

“As with all First Amendment activities, our review is to ensure public safety and that park resources and values are protected; we do not take into consideration content of the message presented,” Litterst said.

NPS grants permits to displays and demonstrations that are “recreational, entertaining, or celebratory in nature,” according to the agency’s website.

The message of the giant statue is to present the female form without objectification, according to the artist that designed the steel tubing and stainless mesh of the sculpture. The woman is in the yoga mountain pose, undraped, and would be positioned around the Washington Monument on the National Mall facing the White House, according to project organizers.

“We need to show women just being in their bodies, just being humans, as an antidote of the constant sexualization of the women’s body, the constant dehumanization,” Cochrane said.

Catharsis has come to D.C. for several years, but last year the group was denied a permit to burn a 30-foot tall Burning Man-style wooden structure.

“The last two years, my favorite part [about Catharsis] was seeing people who had no idea what was going on and just stumbled in,” Catharsis organizer Natalie Ginsberg said. “They are so overwhelmed with this radical inclusion and these principles that we are trying to bring to the world outside of Burning Man.”

The National Mall “is where the statements about what America is about are made,” Cochrane said in a video fundraising for the project.

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