CLASS DESCRIPTION

While much has been written about the representation of sex workers in iconic Western artworks, such as Manet’s 'Olympia' and Picasso’s 'Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,' less attention has been given to sex workers as creators, models, and patrons. This lecture aims to shift the focus to these overlooked figures. Many artists’ models remain undocumented, but some are known to have been sex workers. 

For instance, at least three women depicted in Caravaggio’s paintings were sex workers. What do they reveal of the lived realities of sex work in sixteenth-century Rome? How did sex workers leverage art and literature for self-promotion, as seen in the memoirs of eighteenth-century courtesans like Peg Plunkett and Harriette Wilson, or in the patronage of nineteenth-century grande horizontale Louise Valtesse de la Bigne, or in Camille Waring’s groundbreaking doctoral research on sex workers’s photographic self-portraits in online spaces (2023) as acts of self-representation and resistance?

The sex worker can take myriad forms, including cam worker, hostess, porn actor, pole dancer, dominatrix, full-service sex worker — spanning a broad spectrum of labour. One example is documented in Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s video 'Maintenancer' (2018), made in collaboration with filmmaker Therese Henningsen, which examines the growing post-human sex industry, focusing on the maintenance of sex dolls at a German brothel. Another is foregrounded in Roxana Halls’s painting ‘Dressing Room,’ which depicts the concealed labour that occurs pre-performance in the liminal space between the showgirl's public and domestic sphere.

Feminism’s fraught relationship with sex work was interrogated by Simone de Beauvoir in the 1940s, by performance artist and activist Carol Leigh (creator of Scarlot Harlot) and others in the 1970s, and later by liberal movements in the 1990s that paved the way for contemporary sex worker activism. Through the intersection of visual art and activism, sex worker artists have argued for the decriminalisation and destigmatisation of sex work. 

Examples include candid shots by queer photographer Celeste the Hooker; painter Caroline Coon’s ‘brothel series,’ begun in 1987; Lauren Bowcott’s unfiltered painted portraits of sex workers that celebrate empowerment whilst preserving anonymity; the performance art of former porn star Annie Sprinkle; the Heaux History Project founded by Erica Kane which revives the forgotten histories of Black, brown and indigenous sex work; as well as key exhibitions like ‘Decriminalised futures’ (ICA, London, 2022) which highlighted the importance of an intersectional approach to sex work to reflect experiences of disability, of women of colour, working class women, the queer gaze, trans workers, and so on. 

This lecture will explore this convoluted history, highlighting the fraught relationship between sex-worker as muse, activist and maker,  and ultimately arguing that It's only by centering sex workers that we can counter existing narratives and conceive of a sex worker gaze.

ABOUT OUR LECTURER

Marie-Anne Mancio (she/her) trained as an artist before gaining a D.Phil (University of Sussex) for her thesis Maps for Wayward Performers: feminist readings of contemporary live art practice in Britain.
An accredited Arts Society lecturer, she was commissioned to write and present online courses for Tate and Pearson Love to Learn; has lectured for the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Ben Uri, V & A, The Course, City Lit, and private societies internationally. She has written numerous art reviews and essays, including An A-Z on The Theatre of Mistakes. Her lecture on The Bed in Art was filmed for HENI talks.
She leads art history study tours abroad for ACE cultural tours and through her own company. Hotel Alphabet, including a Caravaggio tour, Venice Biennale trips, and NYC tours.
Since attaining an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing (Glasgow University), her art practice is primarily text based including performances, prints, Whorticulture - a novella about four migrant women in antebellum America and Lieder Für Sexarbeiterinnen In Einer Berliner Nacht, a sound installation for the exhibition Bodies in Trouble at HausKunst Mitte, Berlin.
She is a founder member and co-Director of feminist art collective InFems
She is represented by Sabhbh Curran @ Curtis Brown.

INSTAGRAM: @hotel_alphabet   @infems_artcollective
WEBSITE: www.hotelalphabet.com     www.infems.com

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This is a recording of a live session hosted by The Feminist Lecture Program in July 2025. The reading list for the class can be found alongside this rental.

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