A sex worker art collective exploring:
Intimacy through lies.
Authenticity through commodification.
The digital as the real.
PROJECTS
Trick Mirror
Contract
Low Art/High Standards
E-Viction
Personas zine
UNVEIL
About Us
Press
BLOG
One Year After E-viction
Statement on Censorship: E-viction
CONTACT
Press
︎ “Eyebeam announces artists selected for Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future,” Eyebeam
︎ “How Artists Are Trying to Solve the World’s Problems,” NY Times
︎ “Sex Workers to Host Self-Destructing Digital Variety Show Against EARN-IT,” Vice
︎ “These Sex Worker Artists Are Hosting a Self-Destructing Online Art Show,” Paper Mag
︎“E-viction – An Urgent, Innovative Protest Project,” Peepshow Media
︎ “‘E-Viction’ sex work event sheds light on ‘digital gentrification’ by self-destructing when it’s over”, Daily Dot
︎ La Maison du Rouge Interview
About Us
Our Practice
At its core, sex work, like artwork, is about the interplay between fantasy and reality, intimacy and lies. The Veil Machine, like the sex worker and artist, manipulates through masks. Our group uses a relational and intimate practice to explore these dynamics through art actions.
Our central question is: when we pose sex work as a radical art practice, what new worlds are possible?
Core Producers
Thea Luce
Thea (she/her) is a graduate student, organizer, and curator who lives in NYC. She explores sex work as the intersection of feminized labor, magic, technology, and state formation. In addition to Veil Machine she works with Kink Out and Bay Area Workers Support.
Empress Wu
Empress Wu (she/her) is the chaos-for-pay alter ego of MJ Tom, an NYC-based artist and creative producer interested in investigating alternative modes of kinship available via sex work, queer s/m, and digital landscapes. In addition to Veil Machine, she organizes events and exhibitions for Kink Out and Red Canary Song. She and her work have been featured at the Leslie Lohman Museum, MoMA PS1, and the Performa Biennial. She can also be found on Twitter and Instagram.
Cléo Ouyang
Cléo (she/her) is an artist interested in her own fetishistic desire for art-making, and her relationships with the collaborators that allow her to enact it.