Sculpting Body Ideals

British citizen and artist Alison Lapper was thrust into fame when her 11.5-foot-tall, 13-ton sculptural portrait, Alison Lapper Pregnant, was unveiled on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square in 2006, where it rained for 18 months. Lapper agreed to being cast in the nude by British artist Marc Quinn when she was 7 months pregnant and to be placed on public display; many have called the project collaborative. The controversial sculpture has brought widespread attention to the model’s body and life story. Lapper, born without arms and with shortened legs, is an alumnus of British institutions for disabled children and programs for disabled artists, a single mother, and an artist who makes work about her body and embodied experiences as an amputee woman. Carved from precious Italian marble and placed on a pedestal among statues of King Charles IV of British two naval captains, Quinn’s sculpture of Lapper has been called a contemporary heroine of cultural diversity. Deemed by some as “brave and bold” and “pregnant and proud” and by others as a tasteless and overtly political publicity stunt for Quinn, the work makes a public statement about disability and Lapper’s right to be seen as a productive social subject and a reproductive sexual being. The exposure of Lapper’s body transcends the fact that she is nude, for Lapper grew up in the insolated environments of public intuitions and had limited interactions with public life; for Lapper, the work is a true coming out. The monumental sculpture and Lapper’s own self-portrait photography become displays of the disabled body that transgress public and private realms and bear implications for individual and social bodies.