Sex Workers of Aotearoa: A Day in the Life of

Sex work­ers and artists have gone hand in hand for hun­dreds if not thou­sands of years.  Think of basic­ally nearly every nude woman in a clas­sic paint­ing by a white dude, or Moulin Rouge, or ‘Vic­tor­ia’ or count­less oth­er examples and you get the idea. Oh sure, they’re muses. But what if we did­n’t centre their exper­i­ence through the male gaze? What if we actu­ally looked at art by the sex work­ers, not just about them?

Sex Work­ers of Aotearoa: A Day in the Life of asks what are our pre-con­ceived notions of sex work­ers’ lives.

This exhib­i­tion is about sex work­ers them­selves as image makers, as objects makers, sound artists, poets and per­form­ance artists; it is about the sex in sex work but is also about the unseen labour involved in being paid for ‘sex’. Through art the sub­tleties of the pro­fes­sion will be explored; bound­ar­ies, con­nec­tions, pleas­ures and com­mu­nic­a­tion, stigma and ste­reo­types, bod­ies and the val­ues we place on them.

This exhib­i­tion is an inter­rog­a­tion into the way sex work­ers are seen, and val­ued, with­in both a fine art and wider social con­text. Above all, it is a refus­al to occupy just one kind of rep­res­ent­a­tion­al lane.

Many pieces will be for sale, with a per­cent­age of the pro­ceeds going to The New Zea­l­and Pros­ti­tutes Col­lect­ive.

Check it out at the Wel­ling­ton Museum from July 4–25.