Charlotte Shade

The Bare Breasted Project is a community-powered work illustrating and celebrating the diversity of breasts in Aotearoa New Zealand through the mediums of photography, installation, soundscape and performance.

In Aotearoa women rarely show their breasts to anyone other than intimate partners, reinforcing widely held stereotypes of breasts having to be taught, round, perky, and blemish-free. In reality, the diversity in breasts is as wide as the stereotype is narrow, and this is diversity that deserves attention and celebration.

The Bare Breasted Project invites viewers to challenge and change their perception of breasts by journeying through an extensive collection of photographs and stories of women's breasts and their relationship with them. Bare breasted performers stationed in the exhibition space are intended to normalise the practice of having female breasts out in a non-sexualised context. Viewers will come away having been encouraged to reflect on their own relationship with breasts and the importance of challenging the stereotypes that constrain the freedom and empowerment of the female body.