Nude final eXXXam?

Ricardo Dominguez, associate professor at the University of California-San Diego, is asking students to pose naked for a final exam as a “nude/naked gesture,” one of a number of gestures that take place in his class “Performing for Self.”

Reportedly, the gesture takes place in a dark room lit by candlelight.

In an e-mailed statement, Dominguez says students were “aware from the start of the class that (the gestures are) a requirement.” He says that he has taught the class for 11 years without complaint.

“It was clearly outlined in the first class (just like any other first day where professors go over the syllabus) that the final gesture would be a ‘naked’ one and what we could expect that day,” Dominguez says.

Dominguez says he makes this an assignment because nudity has been a core part of performance art since the mid-20^th century.

“The core canvas for many performance artists has been, and continues to be, the nude or naked body,” Dominguez says. “If students are to learn about performance art as practitioners, this history of the medium is crucial for them to experience.”

While the gestures are necessary to complete the course, getting completely naked wasn’t the only way to pass. Students learn they can do the gesture in a number of ways without having to remove their clothes.

“One can ‘be’ nude while being covered,” Jordan Crandall, chairman of the university’s visual art department, says via e-mail.

Crandall adds, “the ambiguity around the question of ‘nudity’ and ‘nakedness’ is intentional. It is intended to be provocative, to raise issues. That is what performance art does.”

The final assignment has gained some negative attention from current students in the course.

However, Shanise Mok, a former student who took the course in 2012, says the gesture allowed her to “challenge (herself) intellectually.”

“We were not ‘forced’ to do anything,” Mok says. “I was only…forced to think about how I can take my own art to another level. We all had the choice to drop or to find our own creative way to meet the nude or naked prompt as artists should.”

Crandall says the class is an “extremely successful one” in the visual arts department.

For students that feel uncomfortable with the assignment or feel the gesture “will be too hard for them to do,” Dominguez says. But they can drop the class since it’s not a degree requirement.

Dominguez adds, however, that he usually helps students throughout the assignment.

“I have always been willing to work with students to help them navigate the process, during my office hours and in the context of the class,” Dominguez says. “Our advising team is also very willing to discuss the options for doing the performance without having to be actually nude or naked.”

While some students are against the gesture, Mok says she’s glad she took the course and that her classmates and professor made it a welcoming place.

“I personally feel strongly about making the human body an okay thing to talk about,” Mok says. “We all have a body — nipples, butts and pubic hair in all their glory — and it doesn’t need to be sexualized by the news – which is why artists step in to desexualize it and turn the human body into something we can love and appreciate as an art form.”