NEW YORK — The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York will display photography and items from the archives of Pink & White Productions and the company’s founder and director Shine Louise Houston in their upcoming exhibition “On Our Backs: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work.”
Curated by Alexis Heller, the exhibit runs from September 28 through January 19, 2020.
“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,” said Heller.
Aiming to go beyond “a portrait of life at the margins,” the exhibit showcases “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.”
On display are items spanning over a decade of Pink & White Productions’ film history, including a wall of images from the queer porn website CrashPadSeries.com and vitrine artifacts like Houston’s handmade 35mm lens adaptor, clippings from her early art career and production binders with storyboards, scene breakdowns and scripts.
Attendees will be able to flip through the scripts to see behind the process of creating an explicit style of storytelling that has made Houston’s filmography a celebrated queer porn landmark within LGBTQ sexual representation.
Learn more about Pink & White online and on Twitter.
Additional details about “On Our Backs: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work” can be found on the museum’s website.