The four-year-old girl was encouraged to touch the man’s body for the performance art stunt (Picture: Focus on News)

Footage showing a four-year-old child being encouraged to touch a naked man’s body for a performance art stunt has sparked outrage in Brazil.

The young girl crawls around the man at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM), in Brazil, as he lies on his back surrounded by other people looking on.

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Her mother actively encourages her to touch the feet, legs and hand of artist Wagner Schwartz as he performs his ‘La Bete’ stunt.

The bosses behind the work maintain Schwartz’s naked act is in no way erotic, but outraged right-wing politicians and far-right groups have called for the artist to be arrested.


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Wagner Schwartz performs at the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art (Picture: Focus on News)

Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art has defended Wagner Schwartz’s performance (Picture: Focus on News)

Rather than art, they are calling the show disgusting’ and a crime that ‘incites paedophilia’, the Daily Mail reports.



Schwartz has taken his controversial performance across the South American country, having been initially inspired by 1960s artist Lydia Clark.

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Schwartz says he becomes one of Clark’s sculptures when he performs ‘La Bete’.

He said: ‘As I stand or lie naked and vulnerable I allow my audience to interact with my body by inviting them to pull, reshape and manipulate it into many different poses and to construct images using my body’.

Stressing that the girl was not in danger, an MAM spokesperson said: ‘The little girl was with her mother who is also an artist. Her daughter asked to enter the show after being given an explanation as to what it contained.

‘The child wanted to participate and under her mother’s guidance and supervision she is seen on all fours going around the artist’s naked body without showing any embarrassment or aversion.

‘This work was authorised by the museum and is not about eroticism and does not include any erotic content.’

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