Full decriminalisation of sex work is the rallying cry that unites the sex worker rights movement across the world. Under this banner, sex workers and their allies have fought tirelessly for strong workers’ rights, an end to exploitation, an end to criminalisation, and real measures to address poverty. Decriminalised Futures is a celebration of this movement. This exhibition is a testament to what can be created when we use this movement as our inspiration; when we take politicised sex worker organising as our starting point.

– Elio Sea and Yves Sanglante, curators

Decriminalised Futures was a group exhibition featuring thirteen international artists whose work speaks to the multiplicity of contemporary sex worker experiences. It highlighted the history of the sex worker rights movement and its inextricable links to issues of racial and social justice, migrant rights, labour rights, anti-austerity work, and queer and trans liberation. Through an interdisciplinary approach, themes of sacred space, mental health, gender, racial justice, joy, pain, disability, tenderness and desire become tools for solidarity and elicit conversations rooted in the imaginaries of a decriminalised future.

The works in the exhibition comprised of ten distinct projects from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States – including moving image, embroidery, linocut prints, bookmaking, writing, drawing, gaming and sculpture.

Decriminalised Futures aims to build collective knowledge by maintaining an archive of art and recordings produced through the life of the project.

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ARTISTS

+ YARLI ALLISON: Yarli is a Canadian-born, Hong Kongese artist based between London and Paris. She uses sculptural installations and moving images to build fictional worlds closely based on her diasporic background. The works are used to reimagine coping tactics as survival tools in foreign places.

One of her previous films 'Elephant The Allison' (2018) explores body-shaming culture Allison found common in her East-Asian cultural upbringing. The film illustrates an alienated obsessive tree-hole explorer Elephant, who tries to find the like-minded others in London’s dating world, leading to intimate encounters.

In the work produced for 2022's exhibition, Yarli Allison collaborated with Letizia Miro, a Spanish poet and sex worker who migrated to London years ago on a film, presented within an immersive installation. The work explored the story of Letizia, presented as an ‘ideal’ character for the clients’ imagination in a dual-screen setting. The image of the ‘ideal’ is initially an aesthetically and mentally pleasing product, but is also a coping mechanism. The two artists pull back the curtain to show the material reality by combining Letizia’s creative writing and voice performance with Yarli’s digital modeling in a semi-fictional documentary piece.

+ KHALEB BROOKS: Khaleb Brooks is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and writer exploring blackness, transness and collective memory. Meshing the black queer figure with surreal environments in paintings and entering transcendental states in performance they force their audience to confront the literal and social death of black people globally. Over the year prior to this project, Khaleb had been an artist in residence at the Tate Modern, where they used the museums collection to lead weekly workshops and create work around the Trans Atlantic slave trade. Performing in the 2019 Venice Biennale and consistently pushing the boundaries of art as a tool to politically engage, Khaleb continues to exhibit globally: Institute of Contemporary Art (2020 and 2018), Schwules Museum in Berlin (2019), Gazelli Art House in London (2019), GlogauAir in Berlin (2019), 198 Contemporary in London (2017) and We- Dey Gallery in Vienna (2018). Prior to working as an artist full time, Khaleb was an International Development practitioner where they worked with the United Nations and a multitude of NGO’s throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia. They have taken their passion for social justice and consistently seek innovative ways to bring that work to the creative sector. Khaleb, originally from Chicago is inspired by the perseverance of black families in overcoming poverty, addiction, abuse and gang violence as well as their own experiences of being transgender. Khaleb graduated from SOAS with an MSc in Violence Conflict and Development in 2015.

As a part of the Decriminalised Futures programme they explored the subject of their own body once again, and the lack of choice apparent in the commodification of ones identity for survival.

+ CHI CHI CASTILLO: Chi Chi Castillo first felt the thrill of DIY art as a queer teen obsessed with skateboarding, punk, and erased history. Bored by the art of men, she sought to collaborate with others in her world to create zines, music, and visual art for the consumption of those searching for something different. Chi Chi is a DIY filmmaker from California, she’s also a sex worker, chill actress, awkward skateboarder, and is sometimes funny but usually shy.

Chi Chi collaborated with Semaj Peltier to create work for this exhibit. Castillo and Peltier began making films together in 2017, with their first film being “Chi Chi’s House Party”, a smut film highlighting the queer underground in Oakland, CA. Peltier and Castillo are now continuing their work together under the name “Stone Dove”. They’re excited to invite you into Stone Dove’s dream world.

+ CORY COCKTAIL: Power exchange architect and escort; post disciplinary artist with an interest in the intersections of the body and technology, narrative design, contemporary dance, interactive fiction, migration, gender, and sexuality.

Transsexual descendant of indigenous Turtle Islanders and European peoples. Attempting to bring a sex worker digital interactive fiction experience into the world for Decrim Futures. Pronouns he/him and they/them.

+ HANECDOTE: An artist and sex worker with chronic pain who specialises in hand embroidery which speaks from a place of emotion.

Interested in portraying everyday life, inspired by art history but making sure it is much more inclusive and beautiful. Art is therapy, justice, communication, love and a human experience.

+ LIAD HUSSEIN KONTOROWICZ: Liad Hussein Kantorowicz is a performance artist, activist, and perpetual migrant from Palestine-Israel living in Berlin. Her performances deal with de-exotifying and de-mystifying the positions of so-called sexual or political deviants. In them, the body is used as a site to exhibit its multitude of marginalities, as well as being a tool to transgress and contest the boundaries of the public space, and to call into question the public’s ‘democratic’ limitations.

Some of her performances prior to 2022 include: Unidentified (2019) shown at the Schwules Museum Berlin, When You Died, The City Died with You (2018), which premiered at the Cosmopolitan Weekend at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Pussy. An Ongoing Performative Research (2018), which premiered at the 10th Berlin Biennale, No Democracy Here (2017) a film which premiered at CPH:DOX and has since been screened at over 20 film festivals. Her work has been presented at Impulstanz Festival Vienna, Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol, Athens Museum of Queer Arts AMOQA, Kampnagel Hamburg, Transmediale festival Berlin, Ljubljana’s City of Women Festival, Berliner Festspiele, Arcola Theatre London and more, and in the streets, social centers and queer bars in Europe and Palestine-Israel. The apocalyptic 2020 will see the release of her first Album, “Nothing to Declare”. Liad is a longtime sex worker and a spokesperson for sex workers’ rights. She’s the co-founder of Berlin’s Peer Project for migrant sex workers at Hydra e.V. in Berlin, and she founded the term ‘sex work’ in hebrew.

For Decriminalised Futures Liad decided to pay tribute to the work of her sex worker sisters in Palestine-Israel who fight for the rights of all sex workers by commemorating, retelling and re-enacting a historical event in their history.

+ LETIZIA MIRO: Letizia Miro is a London and Barcelona based artist and writer exploring dissident sexualities through video, performance, and text. Her work addresses intimacy, erotic capital, and existential conditions, creating politically charged narratives. Her latest film, The Utopia Project, was selected for the SWXSW Festival in London. With the inter-disciplinary artist La Metro, she presents Dissociative State of Works at La Escocesa for the Perpetracions festival. Featured in exhibitions at the V&A, ICA London, and Gallery 35m2 in Prague, and published in Propel Magazine, Glanta, and Kritiker, she is also completing her first poetry chapbook, Peripheral Corporalities.

+ AISHA MIRZA: Aisha Mirza is a writer, DJ & trauma-informed counselor and indian head masseuse. They are also founder of Misery @miseryparty, a mental health collective and sober clubnight for QTIBPOC.

Aisha is a stripper at Harpies Strip Club, an agony aunt at gal-dem.com, and a dominatrix.

+ ANNIE MOK: Annie Mok is a trans writer-artist, musician, and videogame streamer. As Sally Sativa, she acted as an indie porn star. Her comics work and sex work came together with her fictional 2019 comic book about artist and camgirl Sally Silverhaze in Orgasm Addict: A Comic Book Mixtape (excerpted here). Annie tweets @heyAnnieMok.

+ SEMAJ PELTIER: Semaj Peltier is a model and video artist emphasizing experimental paradigms to document the culture of feminine identities and ecosexuality.

+ DANICA USKERT: Danica Anna Uskert-Quinn is a mixed-race, pansexual, polyamorous film director, producer, video and performance artist, curator, writer, and the editor-in-chief of filmandfishnet.com. As Danica Darling, she is also a cam girl, porn performer, and professional submissive. She currently resides in Hollywood with her dog Elvira. Danica can be found on Instagram @danicauskert.

Unsustainable is a graphic novel written by Danica Uskert based on her experiences in sex work. The story reflects on the stigma leveled against sex workers, and the divide drawn between Hollywood’s “legitimate” actors and adult performers. A kinky parable about love, perversion, the (tainted) relationship to the body and self as they relate to performance, and the healing & destructive power of role-play and BDSM relationships.

+ TOBI ADEBAJO: Tobi Adebajo is an anti-disciplinary artist with a primary focus on Sound, Movement, Visual & Written works, from exploring sex & desire, to audio-visual pieces they curate to create unique harmonies.

Tobi’s work is an affront to rigid traditionalist ideologies that exist with/in Science, Art & Society at large. They confront the toxic effects of indoctrination and its continued effect on humanity. Tobi presents evidence of varying levels of communal/spiritual language that we inherently possess but don’t always have the tools to access, framing this language as a basis for collective healing / liberation.

+ PXR•MXT•R: pxr•mxt•r is an inquiry that will be using the space to study, present and be in negotiation with infrastructure and power exchange.

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_{This exhibition was developed with support from project partners Arika and with funding from Open Society Foundations.}