Ariana Grande is being sued over her ‘God Is a Woman’ music video – as an artist claims she stole his work.
The 25-year-old singer released the music video for her single last year, but she’s now facing legal action from Vladimir Kush, who claims a section of the video which shows Ariana dancing in a candle is identical to two paintings he made nearly two decades earlier.
According to TMZ, Vladimir says he created the two pieces of artwork – called ‘The Candle’ and ‘The Candle 2’ – almost 20 years ago, which both feature a woman as the wick with her arm raised, with a partially clouded sky as the background.
In Ariana’s music video, she can be seen dancing with her arms in the air as she acts as the wick inside the candle, with clouds in the background. Vladimir claims Ariana’s video features the same cloudy sky, ring effect of clouds around the flame and the same light beams radiating from the flame.
The artist is suing Ariana and Freenjoy – who were the production company behind the video – for copyright infringement and wants an injunction to remove her music video from the Internet.
For Freenjoy, it’s not the first time they’ve faced legal action over alleged copyright infringement, as a separate artist sued the company after claiming they had used her artwork in Kendrick Lamar’s ‘All The Stars’ video.
In that suit, Lina Iris Viktor claimed Kendrick – who collaborated with Sza for the track, which featured on the ‘Black Panther’ soundtrack – took her art and used it to promote the soundtrack for the hit Marvel movie without her permission.
Lina alleged representatives for ‘Black Panther’ had contacted her twice to ask her to lend her work to the movie or create new work for it, and after she said no, she claimed they then took it without her consent.
