Mother of student says it’s a ‘perversion’.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A unique course requirement at UC San Diego is causing significant uproar among parents after it was revealed that a final exam for a course in the visual arts department forced students to be fully nude.
“It’s the standard canvas for performance art and body art,†Associate Professor Roberto Dominguez told local ABC News affiliate KGTV. “It is all very controlled … If they are uncomfortable with this gesture, they should not take the class.â€
Dominguez was forced to make comments defending his class after the mother of a student spoke out, claiming the requirement was not clear and was a “perversion.â€
“It bothers me, I’m not sending her to school for this,” said the woman by phone, who asked KGTV to withhold her name. “To blanket say you must be naked in order to pass my class… It makes me sick to my stomach,†she continued.
Students are required to perform “a gesture that traces, outlines or speaks about your ‘erotic self(s),’†according to the course syllabus. In the performance, all of the students are naked, along with the professor, Dominguez, who has taught the class for 11 years, reported Breitbart.
Dominguez confirmed that students indeed have to be nude to pass the final.
“At the very end of the class, we’ve done several gestures, they have to nude gesture. The prompt is to speak about or do a gesture or create an installation that says, ‘what is more you than you are,'” he said, adding that the “performance of self” is done in a dark room lit only by candlelight.
The class “focuses on the history of body art and performance art in relation to the question of the self or subjectivity,” Dominguez told KGTV by phone Friday. In Dominguez’s 11 years teaching the class, he said he has never received a complaint.
In response to the controversy that has ignited in the past week, the chair of UCSD’s visual arts department released the following statement:
The concerns of our students are our department’s first priority, and I’d like to offer some contextual information that will help answer questions regarding the pedagogy of VIS 104A.Â
Removing your clothes is not required in this class.  The course is not required for graduation.
VIS 104A is an upper division class that Professor Dominguez has taught for 11 years. It has a number of prompts for short performances called “gestures.†These include “Your Life: With 3 Objects and 3 Sounds” and “Confessional Self,” among others. Students are graded on the “Nude/Naked Self” gesture just like all the other gestures. Students are aware from the start of the class that it is a requirement, and that they can do the gesture in any number of ways without actually having to remove their clothes. Dominguez explains this – as does our advising team if concerns are raised with them. There are many ways to perform nudity or nakedness, summoning art history conventions of the nude or laying bare of one’s “traumatic” or most fragile and vulnerable self. One can “be” nude while being covered.
There are many comments from former students that are visible online. These comments clarify the matter quite directly. It is important to listen to students who have actually taken the class. Again, the concerns of our students are our department’s first priority.