This showcase is a celebration and a peek into the lives, art, and organizing of American sex workers who were active in the preceding years and at the beginning of the new millennium. As technology and government increasingly target, shift, and dictate how sex work can exist, we must be the ones documenting our lives and work. To all the sex workers who came before us, we offer our deepest gratitude and reverence. To all the sex workers of the future, may you know a world in which this profession is respected and uplifted.
Sex work is work, and it is as beautiful, fraught, and varied as we are as individuals. There is no universal sex worker experience other than the fact we must all contend with stigma, censorship, and safety on some level. Until the most historically marginalized of us–our BIPOC, trans, immigrant, disabled, queer–community members have access to the same rights and opportunities, until all of us are free from criminalization, we must organize, advocate, and fight for the full decriminalization of sex work wherever and whenever possible.
The Oregon Safer Workers Coalition (OSWC) addresses economic and health disparities among consensual adult sex workers and trafficking survivors in Oregon, centering BIPOC communities through research, advocacy, education, and harm reduction to promote safety and equity.
Don’t forget to donate to the OSWC here
Click to Learn More About Each Artist:
Meet Our Show’s Merchants:
Brandiwyn Kennedy-Sugita
Bio: Brandiwyn Kennedy-Sugita is a survivor of incest and repeated childhood sexual abuse, former full-service sex worker, and Japanese-American mother of two living in Pierce County, WA. A long-time literary and visual artist, Brandiwyn self-publishes physical media that navigates complex trauma by mixing film photography with written word. Her prose and poetry dissect the cascading effects of childhood sexual abuse in adulthood through the lenses of escaping domestic violence and homelessness, cycle-breaker parenting, blurred identity, nurturing desire, and embracing grief.
Instagram: @bbbrandiwyn
Website: Brandiwyn.com
Love Good Beauty and Conjure
Bio: Love Good Beauty and Conjure is a Portland based Hoodoo/Conjure resource focusing on acquainting Black/indigenous Folks with traditional Hoodoo/conjure practices as a tool for resistance, protection and liberation.
We offer regular courses, spiritual consultations, and traditional Hoodoo and Conjure oils, herbs and curios!
Instagram: @lovegoodbc
Website: holyhoodoovixen.com
Jazmyne Araya
Bio: Tattooer, artist, and sex worker in Portland, OR and Brooklyn. Work across mediums focuses on serene and wild femininity with a cheeky tone inspired by 20th century pornography.
We offer regular courses, spiritual consultations, and traditional Hoodoo and Conjure oils, herbs and curios!
Instagram: @i.dove.u, @backup_jazmynian_devil
Website: jazmynes-world-1851.myshopify.com/
R. Stranger
Bio: R. Stranger (they/she) is a queer Jewish interdisciplinary artist born and raised in the SF Bay Area. Through engagement with various modes of storytelling—writing, photography, film, performance, book arts, and installation—their work centers queer experience, having/being a body, and the transformative quality of grief. Drawing on their grassroots community organizing background, Stranger’s art practice is heavily collaborative and multimedia in nature. They believe in the power of art as a healing and liberatory practice, and dream of the dismantling of settler colonialism everywhere, standing firmly for a Free Palestine.
Stranger holds a BLA in Critical Art Practices from Hampshire College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. They live in Portland OR with their chihuahua mix Rugelach.
Instagram: @rz.stranger
Website: rstranger.com
Sarah Sekula
Bio: Sarah is a CalArts alum with passion for the whimsical, fantastical, and otherworldly. She invites everyone to enjoy her dreams that she has brought to life.
Instagram: @photosfordayz
Tasteful Obituary (Beau)
Bio: Tasteful Obituary is an overarching title cradling my multi-disciplinary pursuits. While the name came to me eight years ago, the project started earlier than I can remember. Perhaps the work of a parasitic insect, or unfinished business in a long faraway life.
Tasteful Obituary is the idea of ‘what will you leave behind?’ What secret, personal, private, perverted things will be dug out of your sock drawer? What do you want to be abandoned when your belongings are not yours anymore? Left to collect dust and mildew under a box in an antique mall. Well, personally, I want them to be tasteful. Maybe a little gross. With a whole lot of sex appeal. The hunger to create a worthwhile little life drives me to bring my heartbeat sticky-sweet apparitions to reality. Whether that be on someone’s wall, a cherished memory, or wet and rotting for the bugs to eat. I hope my work can provoke and inspire.
Instagram: @tasteful.obituary
Txmpted
Bio: Txmpted is a handmade dancer wear brand with no size cap offering unique styles on upcycled materials. Made for SWers by a SWer all designs express sexuality, creativity and art while putting sustainability at the forefront. Hosting monthly photoshoots, fashion shows and art markets Txmpteds goal is to create community within the sex work worlds and create opportunities and safe spaces for Swers to model, connect, showcase art and walk the runway!
Instagram: @_txmpted_
Website: txmpted.bigcartel.com