The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

ON OUR BACKS: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work

Institution
Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
Grant Cycle
Fall 2018
Amount
$50,000
Type of Grant
Exhibition Support

This exhibition explores the history of queer sex work culture, and its intimate ties to art and activism. Coined by bisexual activist, Carol Leigh, aka. The Scarlot Harlot in 1978, ‘sex work’ is broadly defined as exchanging sex or erotic services for gain and connotes personal agency and politicized action. More than a portrait of life at the margins, what emerges in this exhibit is a demonstration of queer and transgender sex workers’ deep community building, creative organizing, self-empowerment, identity/desire affirmation and healing and the use of pornography as a deft tool for queer and trans liberation.


Angelo Madsen Minax, Live Nude Genitals, 2012. Neon and Plexiglas, 36 x 36 inches. Photo by Kristine Eudey, 2019, courtesy of Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York.
Leon Mostovoy. From the “Market Street Cinema” series, 1987 – 1988. Silver gelatin print.

See Also

1986

Warhol painted more than 100 works related to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, which some have read as complex reckoning of his homosexuality, Catholicism, and mortality in response to witnessing AIDS devastate the gay community.