If it meets these minimum conditions:
1) The artist declares that it is art and that it was intentionally conceived or created to be so.
2) Experts Agree.
3) To be honest I can never remember the 3rd one, but IMHO even the 2nd is unimportant. (If an artist makes art and there is no expert to agree, is it art?)
In the case of the young fellow, I'm not sure how he would respond to the question: It that art? I think he would not agree. His agenda is completely different.
But as for the young MIT student, she has declared it to be so and intentionally so.
As an expert I agree. It is art. My caveat is, however, is that it is bad art. It lacks skill or craftsmanlike qualities. If her intention (as a part of the art) was to be provocative (as some in these various discussions have intimated), there she succeeded. But to what end? What was her critical thinking process?
If we take her statements at face value, that part of the process was as badly conceived and designed as the tangible pieces of her art.
As an artist and as an instructor I find work that is intentionally provocative tends to fall flat in a number of areas. And then there are the students who make outrageously provocative work without even knowing that they have done so.
I had tall blonde graduate student from CA who was married to a very intense, quiet black man. She collected figurines and made paintings about them. In one, she showed a large blonde southern belle doll sitting with a small prostrate ceramic Uncle Ben figure bowing at her feet. In her mind it was a loving joke about how much her husband worshipped her and could not understand why every person in the room was outraged.
It is very difficult to get some students to understand that if they make a piece of art, they are responsible, in some part, for the message it sends. (which, I think, is what the crux of most of these arguments on this topic center around) If you are in a crowded theatre you may intent to yell out "Fido" while calling your dog, but if you yell out "Fire" instead or some deaf old lady in the 3rd row hears "Fire", then you bear some responsibility for the outcome.
Ones art, as an idea or object, exists independently of intention. Just as guns exist independently of the intention of being used soley for hunting or self-defense. Ideas and objects can be misused or misapplied. That does not make the creator SOLELY responsible for the outcome. The person who misconstrues the intent bears some too.
The fact that most people did not scream and run away from her or shout out that there was a bomb, indicates that the majority of the people did not perceive her has having harmful intention. Because in all honesty. If you see something that is clearly a bomb. More like the young man in your image, your overwhelming instinct will be to run.
So, until people begin using pretty packages to terrorise the general populations, I will suggest there was an overreaction. On the other hand, some people misconstrued her intention and she does bear some responsibility for that.
As for whether these two young people should be able to wear them in public, that is a debate about radical freedom. And while I am not an expert on that subject, I believe in radical freedom, so I will say yes. They do.
They literally have a right to do anything they please. However, that does not mean that they are immune from the checks and balances which society places on any action.
My Favorite
Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios