Human furniture

Human furniture is a practice in which a person is used or posed as a functional furnishing, often in performance art, fetish practice, or role-play.

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Human objectification: The treatment of a person as an object rather than as an autonomous human being. Human furniture makes the boundary between enacted objecthood and actual dehumanization especially visible.
Performance art: Art in which live action by an artist or participants constitutes or shapes the work. A posed person can become a living element of a staged artwork.
Human footstool: A person positioned to support another person's feet as a stool would. It is a specific furniture role that illustrates bodily support as the defining function.
Human statue: A performer who holds a still pose to resemble a statue, often in a public setting. Stillness alone does not make a performer furniture; the furnishing role adds a practical function.
Body art: Art that uses the artist's or another person's body as its material, medium, or subject. It places furniture-like posing within a broader history of bodily performance.
Fetishism: A pattern of sexual interest focused on a particular object, body part, material, or situation. Furniture poses may serve as a focus of sexual interest or fantasy.
Human table: A person posed or used as a surface on which objects can be placed. This role turns the body into a horizontal furnishing surface.
Living mannequin: A person who poses as a mannequin, typically displaying clothing or products. Both use a body as a display object, but a mannequin role need not provide furniture-like support.
Relational aesthetics: An art approach that makes social relations and interactions the material of artworks. Some human-furniture works organize encounters between performers and gallery visitors.
Role-playing: An activity in which participants enact assumed roles within an imagined or agreed scenario. Participants may adopt furniture and user roles without presenting the scene as art.