Jerri Allyn

                                


Sx Celebrated: Expanding Erotic Power




Title: Sx Celebrated: Expanding Erotic Power
Date: Saturday, September 28, 2024
Time: 10:00am to 10:00pm
Location: The Art Room, 908 S. Olive St., Los Angeles, CA 90015
Funders: This project is generously supported by the National Tanes Fund, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE's)
Lightning Fund, The Art Room and the Woman’s Building

Admission to all events are FREE and DONATIONS to The Woman's Building, a tax-deductible non-profit organization, are welcome. Thank you!

 Sx: Celebrated: Expanding Erotic Power, derives its stance from the Sex Positive Movement, 1920s to the present. It is defined as “... a social and philosophical movement that seeks to change attitudes and promote the recognition of sexuality, in countless forms of expression, as a natural and healthy part of the human experience ... “ ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_movement ). This movement builds on the 1850s Free Love Movement  “... freedom from state regulation and moralistic religious interference in personal relationships ...” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_love ).  

Working collaboratively with the sitters, I am creating 5.5’H x 3.5’W photomontage portraits of colleagues involved in pro-sexuality gigs as well as grass roots social justice movements. Fine art prints with hand-sewn fabric frames, inspired by historical and imaginary figures will be hung from an exhibit ceiling. I like to imagine these portraits might come fluttering alive – while the sitter’s showcase their performances and workshops. 

I’m aware of projects that individually explore comprehensive sex ed, pro sex activities, or labor rights for sex workers. This project examines how these arenas intersect and influence one another in my life, the subjects lives, and society at large, addressing health, consensual sexual freedom, and human rights.

Scholars in several fields and adult entertainment practitioners, agree that sexual energy, including erotic labor, can be harnessed as a generative life force for possibility, imagination, and creativity (i.e: medical and health, gender studies, anthropology and history, psychology (mutual aid, trauma and resiliency), arts and culture). Sex: Celebrated raises issues, invites dialogue, and takes action to ultimately transform culture.

I am striving for confident, elegant portrayals. The photomontages represent fertility, androgyny, sacred unions, healing, sensual feasting, and highly educated, artistically trained entertainers, love and more. Giving them a contemporary flair, we personalize each, embellishing the portraits with meaningful attire and objects, favorite pets, and phrases of symbolic significance to the sitters. The brief text and question at the foot of each provide a clue into layers of contemporary meaning. 

The portraits are digitally printed on archival canvas. I then hand-sew fabric frames, and attach wooden rods. Ideally, they may be installed hanging in a circular formation. 

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros …  personifying creative power and harmony. … I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.” - Audre Lorde, Poet


By adorning the portraits with rich colors and expansive backgrounds, I am further dignifying the sitters, imaging regal personages, to counter-balance the stigma and limiting moral viewpoints used to judge body pleasure and erotic laborers, some of the most maligned workers in history. 

Joining many others before and alongside me, I’m crafting pictorial representations inspired by powerful leaders from antiquity to once again put a modern frame, on the challenging centuries-old debate about sexual mores. 


Exiled from the dominant culture, the subjects have become creators of a transgressive counter culture celebrating their agency and determining their own path - despite the backdrop of conservatives and evangelicals striving to control BIPOC and women’s bodies. I hope this project encourages interested audiences to consider a deeper investigation of the issues raised than they’ve previously examined in their own lives. I’d love to move some hearts and minds toward new knowledge, understandings, and support for: 

  • Creative eros; 

  • Lessoning the shame, disgrace and hysteria surrounding sexualities and sex work; 


Inspiring actions that seek solutions, for example: 



  • Support for the Guttmacher Institute initiatives. For youth, comprehensive sex education - along with sexually transmitted diseases - teaching units on healthy relationships, gender options, sexual orientation, consent, medically accurate information. (https://www.guttmacher.org/about)



  • Support for the American Sexual Health Association campaigns. For adults, promoting sexual health, responsible sexual behavior, and a myriad of body-positive pleasure activities. (https://www.ashasexualhealth.org/celebrating-sexual-health-september/)

  • Support for the Stripper Co-op (in Los Angeles @StripperCo-op). Actors Equity bargains for adult entertainers. 

  • SWOP LA=Sex Workers Outreach Project Los Angeles: Pursue human rights for bodily autonomy, racial and social justice, and mutual liberation. (https://swoplosangeles.org/about/)

  • Decriminalize Sex Work: Improve policies relating to all forms of sex work and end the prohibition of consensual adult prostitution in the U.S. Evidence shows that decriminalizing sex work will help end human trafficking, improve public health, and promote community safety. (https://decriminalizesex.work/)

“Eroticism is … an experience of aliveness which beats back deadness. If ever there is a time in which deadness needs to be countered, it is these moments of crisis in which the shadow of death is ever-present. … Creativity is where Eroticism lives.” – Esther Perel, Psychotherapist