Stripping Down and Squirting Ketchup with a Nude Performance Artist

"Do you think I should still go ahead with it?" Deborah de Robertis had asked, a few days before the performance.

In the build-up to her latest art strip on Sunday—a response to the representation of women and sexuality in the work of the celebrated photographer Bettina Rheims—doubts were creeping in.

It was scheduled for the final day of Rheims' popular retrospective show at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. The specific target was a portrait of Monica Bellucci in a red leather dress, squirting ketchup on to a plate of spaghetti.

Why wouldn't you? I asked.

"You know, after what happened in Brussels."

Look, I mumbled, if people being blown up stops you from stripping naked in public and squirting ketchup over yourself, then we've let the terrorists win.

De Robertis is from Luxembourg and studied in Brussels, so the attacks were close to home and she's sensitive about not appearing callous or shallow.

Having gained notoriety for stripping naked in front of nude works by Courbet and Manet at Musee d'Orsay in Paris, she's keen for a repeat but also wary.

In the end, it doesn't take much convincing for her to go on with the show. If there's one thing she's not short on, it's self-confidence. Or so I thought before she invited me to watch her in action.

In the hours before the stunt she is clearly gripped by anxiety as she knocks back a glass of red around the corner from the Maison Européene de la Photographie. She's not a natural exhibitionist. She also has the split personality of an actor whose nerves hold them back while their ego pushes them forward. Above all, she is keen to be seen as a valid artist.

So in an age of actual terrorism, are you an art terrorist? I ask her at the bar in the Marais—an enclave of Parisian hipster types, not far from the district targeted in November's attacks.

"No, I don't consider myself an art terrorist, I just want to go in a direct line," she says, doodling a map on a notepad as a visual metaphor, "and not become part of the system."

The squiggly line she's drawn, which follows a long, convoluted route to art world recognition, is what other artists do, she explains. That means kissing ass, showing your face at the right shows, and begging the right collectors or agents for a chance.

"The art world is like being a bitch on the street waiting for a customer. Art directors are the customers. Artists are poor and have no money. As a woman you have to wait a longer time to be recognised. I don't want to wait. Why should we wait like bitches? If something needs to be said I will say it. I won't wait until I'm 80 for someone to say my work is worthy."

When you say "bitch," do you mean prostitute? I ask.

"Ah, maybe," she says. She seemed tense and distracted. De Robertis has a nagging paranoia that the point of her work won't be expressed clearly and will be left open to interpretation by men who might think she is exploiting her sexuality, or by feminists who might dismiss it as superficial antics, or by the general public who might see her as an attention-seeker clutching at fame.

"I want it to be profound," she says.

Why has she picked this exhibition as her latest target—is it a critique?

"It's a challenge to her [Rheims] and to myself. She's alive, she can respond," De Robertis says.

She explains that the images Rheims captures—mostly female celebrities in various states of undress – originally used "codes of pornography" when they were first produced (the Bellucci portrait is from 1995.) But in 2016, according to De Robertis, what used to be pornographic or erotic codes are now just the same as those in advertising.

"When you ask a woman to pose like this, you are using women's bodies to sell a product. Her work is no different to this. For me, the institution [the gallery] becomes my product for the image of women."

Rheims' work is about the female form, deconstructing myths and the power of sexuality. De Robertis says we don't see the full picture of womanhood or what goes on behind the scenes, so the work resembles advertising tropes where the sexualization of women's bodies is omnipresent.

"It's meant to be seductive, but with the ketchup I turn it into something repulsive," she explains.

The queues for the gallery go right around the block despite the rain showers interspersing the Easter Sunday sunshine. De Robertis has brought an entourage of about 20 local artists and writers. It includes Femen protestor and journalist Eloise Bouton, who is still challenging her conviction for running topless through a Paris church in 2014 with "Christmas is cancelled" scrawled on her back, carrying pieces of liver representing the abortion of the baby Jesus.

De Robertis has also hired two huge, black bouncers, Jean-Marie and Shaqe, who've been instructed to protect her if the gallery's security staff get heavy-handed.

Inside, the wait for De Robertis to strip off seems interminable. Is she having second thoughts?

I wander around the exhibition looking at naked bodies and wondering when exactly nudity became passé. Probably when internet pornography became ubiquitous, I decide. Sex and sexiness has become taken for granted. In the digital world, undressed bodies are interchangeable and boring.

In the real world, being naked in public is the stuff of actual nightmares for most people. We assume people who do it to be either brave or mad.

De Robertis throws down a white rug in the middle of the gallery floor, turns on the music, opens her dress to reveal her breasts, and begins squirting a bottle of ketchup into her mouth. I look around to see what the public think.

Most people's reaction is to smile. The museum staff are not so amused. They try to cover her up. She parades around them, laughing. The sickly sweet smell of ketchup is mildly nauseating.

"She's clearly doing a protest," I hear a middle-aged Canadian couple say, excitedly.

The words "I want you to lick my ketchup," are repeated—a sample on the rap beat. De Robertis had asked feminist philosopher Genevieve Fraisse to record the mantra, but she wasn't available so she did it herself.

The cortège of supportive artists applauds and shouts bravo, in between awkward silences. At times, it looks like a prank or a dirty protest. De Robertis revels in a naughty schoolgirl, enfant terrible persona.

Then the guard's patience snaps. He grabs her and manhandles her away from the crowd. Someone turns off the lights and closes the doors but Shaqe forces them open. I follow the scuffle downstairs into the street as the entourage chants "I want you to lick my ketchup," over and over.

The queues of people look bemused. The police arrive. De Robertis' breasts are still exposed. She doesn't look like she wants to avoid arrest. She's bundled into a police car.

She's kept in a jail cell overnight and is released 24 hours later. As a repeat offender, she is walking a tightrope. At some point a museum may decide to press full charges.

She is suffering for her art, but the art world remains unchanged. The gallery has made a lot of money this weekend, while De Robertis has made none. It's not about the money, she says, it's about her work.

The nature of artistic work is that it develops and grows. In the genre of naked art there is only so many times the trick can be repeated before its message becomes obsolete.

As I walk back to my car through a sea of Parisian hipsters, my main thought is: I hope the police have given her some napkins for all that tomato sauce. Or failing that, a plate of frites.