One of a kind silver gelatin photographic prints on direct positive paper, hand embroidered with metallic thread. Numbers and dimensions variable. Presented in a ”shrine”, the individual prints mounted in black frames with black mounts and no glass, with an ”altar” covered with a black velvet cloth underneath the framed photos. On the altar are lit votive candles, with an additional supply of unlit candles on the side for visitors to the installation to light and add to the candles on the altar. The ambient lighting in the room is red (like a darkroom safelight or a red light district), with choral music playing.
Originally produced for the We Walk Among You: Womxn’s Strike exhibition on International Women’s Day 2020, curated by sex worker art collective FemmeDaemonium and subvertising art activists Special Patrol Group.
With sex workers and allies as subjects, photographed with antique plate cameras on direct positive paper to produce one of a kind prints, Icons is an ongoing and continually evolving installation addressing themes of the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, feminine archetypes and mythologies, witchcraft and sex magick, and queer sex work feminism. The metallic thread used echoes traditional painted icons, but employs the feminine craft of embroidery, an art form rarely recognised as such in the patriarchal art world. It addresses the hypocrisy of using sex to sell when sex work is criminalised or looked down upon, and invites the audience to participate in a gesture of reverence towards a group of womxn often maligned and ignored.