Paintings are usually created by one artist. In a very rare instance, however, two women recently were able to quickly work on five paintings at a French museum, though in an unconventional way.
The women sprayed the words “MeToo” in red on a 19th-century painting of a woman’s vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet as part of a protest by French-Luxembourgish performance artist and feminist Deborah de Robertis.
Fortunately, “The Origin of the World,” a nude painted in 1866 and displayed at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, was protected by a glass pane which prevented damage. The activists, aged 38 and 31, were removed by security guards and arrested after spraying “MeToo” on other exhibited artworks by male artists described by De Robertis as “predators” and “censors.”
“MeToo” is the name of the social awareness movement started by a sexual assault survivor, Tarana Burke, in 2017 to draw attention to the rape and sexual harassment of women by usually powerful men. Women who were victims of such men were encouraged to post “MeToo” as their status on their social media accounts to draw attention to the widespread problem.
Meanwhile, Dutch artist Rajacenna van Dam easily outperforms the two activists and other painters.
Her unusual talent, which she reportedly developed to relieve her boredom and just for fun, has made her very productive and a social media star. Videos of herself painting attracts millions of views and buyers.
The Vlaardingen resident’s art sell for between 6,000 and 12,000 euros ($6,450 to $12,900), according to her father Jaco van Dam.
To Rajacenna’s knowledge, she is the only person capable of painting with both her hands and feet all at the same time, producing 10 different artworks in one sitting.
“I work a bit on one canvas, then move to another one, so I’m always dividing my attention between them,” said Rajacenna, who technically is left-handed, according to Agence France-Presse.
Turkish-German neurologist Onur Gunturkun studied Rajacenna’s brain and saw that the left and right sides of her brain are three times more connected than average, making her “capable of things that neuroscience deems impossible.”