Embroidered sex toys, dominatrix videos and a graphic rendering of a BDSM dungeon are among work by 13 artists in an exhibition that calls for decriminalisation
“This is Not for Clients”, proclaims the title of a two-screen video installation. The significance of these words soon becomes clear as two nine-minute films – one silent – simultaneously unspool the story of a sex worker’s journey from “princess” to “dominatrix” to “low cost”. The camera drifts around a candy-coloured virtual sex dungeon as a voiceover explains: “High volume, low price, in order to survive. I have passed for ever to the side of the a-normals, of the crazy, of the misfits. Only we know when we survive, dirty with their opinions.”
You can see why clients would not want to prick their consciences with this glimpse behind the scenes of their erotic fantasies. Letizia Miro, who wrote the text and performs in the film’s framing scenes, caters for such clients in her other life as an “unconventional libertine”. A London-based Catalan writer, poet and philosophy PhD, Miro quotes Virginia Woolf and the poet and novelist Ocean Vuong on her glossy website, which advertises her services as a fantasy girlfriend, “kinky companion” and “sensuality coach”.
