Vasilyeva describes herself on Onlyfans as a mix between the Mona Lisa and a porn star. Out of a need for money and as a strategy for survival, Vasilyeva experimented with sharing her work on the online platform. Her videos are an ironic take on sexuality, and she plays with the stereotypical male view of eroticism and pleasure. Where porn aims to provide pleasure, Vasilyeva’s work is conversely disruptive. Playing with her audience’s expectations and their imaginations, she turns her back on their gratification by sharing near boring and non-erotic clips. In this programme, we show three of these short videos.

Ellen Steinberg generously and intimately demonstrates how she transforms into Annie Sprinkle: porn star, performance artist and sexual diva. “It’s fun and it’s easy,” she says.

In her video performance, Loze portrays a hip thirty-something who is constantly analysed, spied on, and lured in by artificial intelligence algorithms that serve commercial purposes. In an unconventional and mocking way, the film questions our current lifestyles full of dating apps, ordering services and data brokers.

Lying on a recliner during a therapy session, an ambiguous figure shares anecdotes based on personal memories of the artist that address the everyday discrimination she experiences due to her gender, origin, and socio-economic status.

Through digital manipulation, Vasilyeva transforms herself into an object that symbolises the social abuse of power. Her work brings to light how sexuality, religion and racial norms direct a view of the feminine gender. Altar is a collage inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Lust and consists of a pyramid of champagne glasses inhabited by several alienatingly identical clones of Vasilyeva herself. The figures are assembled with elements, sets, props, and quotes from pornographic films that have been digitally edited, abstracted and re-structured.

De Jong explores sex cam platforms and the power dynamics behind the screen of these online spaces. In BRB, the absence of sex workers takes centre stage. We see empty spaces, domestic rooms filled with teddy bears, pets, and lost sex toys. A chat room gives an insight into conversations between different members waiting for the performers. These are often funny, usually dark, and almost always worrying.