The FIAC is full, and attracts all kinds of visitors. On Friday, it was plainclothes police officers who went to the 35th International Contemporary Art Fair. Not to admire the works on display, but to take photos of the Russian artist Oleg Kulik, considered pornographic or even zoophilic, a judicial source told AFP on Monday, confirming information from "The World".



Some of these photographs, taken in the late 1990s, depict naked Kulik, sometimes simulating zoophilic acts. Customs officers, after noticing about thirty of them on October 22, alerted the Paris prosecutor's office. Which seized the police station of the 8th district in order to withdraw them "from the sight of an uninformed public, in particular the minors".



The message "is not to advocate zoophilia"



The director of the FIAC, Martin Bethenod, affirms that it is "not about pornographic images but of photographs taken within the framework of performances where the artist puts himself in an extreme way, like those where he is a dog, naked with a collar and throws himself at people or cars barking, biting them etc. ”



He also recalls that controversial works "have an undeniable artistic status since they have been shown, purchased, presented, published since the 1990s". Martin Bethenod also believes that the message "is not to advocate bestiality but to ask where are the limits between what is human and what is animal".



The owners of the Moscow XL gallery, Elena Selina and Serguei Khripoun, were questioned at the 8th district police station.

The works were returned to the organizers of the FIAC, whose 2008 edition ended on Sunday.


Find the slideshow of the most controversial photos by clicking here

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