These figures are part of the controversy surrounding Body Worlds, the exhibition created by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who developed plastination in 1977.
This technique replaces the body’s fluids and fats with plastic materials that allow muscles, organs, and tissues to be preserved for years.
The exhibits use bodies donated for educational purposes, but some sexual compositions sparked strong criticism.
In 2009, Von Hagens defended one of these pieces and said the two people depicted had authorized this pose before they died.
However, donating one’s body for research does not necessarily mean consenting to any public display.
That same year, a court in Augsburg, Germany, banned the display of a sexual composition in the city, ruling that it violated human dignity.
An exhibition designed to teach how our bodies work ended up pitting science, consent, and the limits of spectacle against one another.