Stripper Life Drawing, hosted by East London Stripper Collective

Join a life drawing class like no other. This event is for artists of all genders, backgrounds and levels of ability and open to people 18 years old or above in age. Sex worker artists from the Scotland for Decrim network are inviting the public to take a rare glimpse into a world that is notoriously secretive, mysterious and hidden from view. Come and draw strippers and sex workers as they perform their usual club routines – in a different context from the strip club to the art gallery. Capture eroticised performance in action and witness sexual labour as the visual art form it always has been.

Artists and sex workers have a long and intertwined history. Some of the most celebrated painters in the world (Degas, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec) all famously depicted sex workers in paintings hanging in prestigious galleries today. But sex workers identities have long been erased from the public imagination, reviled, stigmatised and narrativised as victims.

The contemporary sex workers’ rights movement demands autonomy, for sex workers to be seen as the protagonists of their own lives, images and histories. This life drawing class, organised entirely by sex workers, requires artists to participate in a cultural exchange, to recognise the eroticised labour performed and to enter the class as contributors of an artistic happening, rather than consumers of sexualised performance.

East London Stripper Collective: ELSC is a network of feisty, feminist and fiercely independent women, who also happen to be strippers. Founded in 2014, the ELSC are committed to supporting and promoting self-organisation among strippers and lapdancers, challenging stigma around sex work, standing up to exploitation and fighting for improved safety and harm-reduction in the wider sex industry. ELSC remains an autonomous organisation in charge of creating their own working conditions and supporting members of their community.