On a mission to present the more nuanced, humanised face of sex work to the public, National Ugly Mugs recently hosted an exhibition at the Vagina Museum, showcasing visual art, photography and zines from former and current sex workers.
National Ugly Mugs (NUM) is an organisation that provides greater access to justice and protection for sex workers, whose ultimate goal is full decriminalisation of sex work in the UK – and, ideally, in the world. NUM’s Vocational Support Coordinator and curator of this exhibition, Sally Anderson, says, “For everyone’s safety and future, we really need to see that. Things like this exhibition open up that conversation and let sex workers have a chance to tell their own stories. It plants the seed with people of: there’s a person behind these headlines, there’s a person behind these sweeping opinions and misconceptions.”
The importance of sex worker art exhibitions, such as this one, entitled Making Marks, is that it gives a frequently misrepresented and discriminated against group of people a voice while increasing visibility. “We need to be visible in order to give our side of things and say, no, this is actually what we want and what we need to be able to work safely,” Sally adds. “These are people with mixed and nuanced experiences rather than that narrow view that you sometimes see.” Full decriminalisation of sex work in the UK would mean workers are able to operate without the threat of criminal sanctions and make them safer due to a plethora of reasons, including: increased power in all their interactions, ability to share spaces and look out for each other, use the justice system to negotiate fair conditions or seek redress for abuse, and make it easier to find jobs outside of the sex industry with prostitution struck from police records.
The visibility is twofold: both in person and on social media. Sally actually says she was surprised by how much momentum Making Marks managed to pick up on social media. Social media, specifically Meta, has long been an enemy of any account that covers sex work, sex education or sex positive content. From protests outside UK Meta’s headquarters in Euston back in July 2023 to more recent campaigns in May 2025 calling on Meta to stop discriminating against sex workers, it has been an ongoing battle – but one that disproportionately destroys the lives of sex workers, with next to nothing in terms of explanation or reassurance from the social media giant. The New Feminist reached out to Meta for comment but received none.
Just last November, Sexquisite Events, a performing arts company that creates paid creative opportunities for sex workers and aims to create social change through art and performance, had its Instagram account permanently deleted with no prior warnings and despite being “all in the green in settings”. The founder, Maedb Joy, shared in a Substack essay, “When platforms remove access to visibility and creative opportunities, they narrow our choices and ability to diversify our income streams and access other forms of work. It pushes many of us back into sex work, including those who wish not to do it, for whatever reason.”
Art as a viable vocation or personal catharsis
Making Marks featured art from both former and current sex workers, the majority of whom were exhibiting for the first time. Sally, who is an artist herself and does a lot of facilitating and teaching, says, “Your first exhibition is a huge moment and being able to do it in a well-known venue makes it especially so. So for a lot of these people, this will be the start of their artist CV, which is wonderful.” In her role as Vocational Support Coordinator at NUM, Sally’s main focus is on supporting sex workers to progress in their careers, however that may look: be it leaving sex work, moving to a different form of sex work, or combining the two. “We never ask anyone to leave sex work or make that any sort of condition or even a question. We want to make sure everyone’s empowered with whatever they want to do and help them with it.”
@kittiartxox was one of the artists who exhibited at Making Marks, and not only was it her first time exhibiting, but it was also the first time she had ever shown her art in public in real life. “It felt a bit surreal seeing my work out in front of people, but it felt really good, and people seemed to like it,” K says. “I create kind of haphazardly (that’ll be the raging ADHD) more than from any particular technique. Exhibiting the piece reminded me that this way of working is valid, as people can still connect with the emotion behind it, and the only condition for being an artist is creating art.”
The piece of art K exhibited was inspired by the selfie of another worker taken in a pool whilst on holiday, which she made over a year ago. She says, “I hesitated at first about submitting it because I worried it might not be ‘obvious’ enough. The painting gets to ‘hide’ its sex work connection if it wants to. But the more I sat with it, the more I liked the idea of showing a sex worker outside of work, full of safety and happiness: floating, anonymous, at ease. For me, there’s a huge juxtaposition there that I wanted to express. So, this piece wasn’t originally made to declare anything, it was made to simply exist – a freedom we’re often not afforded.”
Following Making Marks, Sally will work with the artists who want support with how to secure funding, gain entry to other exhibitions, and where to look for open calls, among other topics. Exhibitions are vital for CV building and growing audiences in the creative field. Sally adds, “Even things like having photographs on your Instagram where you’re standing in front of a professionally installed exhibition are really, really good for people.”
Beyond the vocational pathway is the personal exploration that can come from creating art. “It’s almost like self-therapy. If you’re putting your experiences into your artwork, it’s getting them out and can be quite cathartic,” Sally explains. Sally highlights one artist whose relationship with their own body, artwork, and sex work is all intertwined in a really positive way. One piece, entitled Pleasure Is Our Birthright, by Saskia, is a reflection of their journey of claiming the birthright of pleasure and finding safety in self-expression.
However, Sally also spoke to some artists who had some really difficult experiences, and the act of creating the work led them to need a bit of a pause and to lie low for a while. “It’s been quite humbling because with my role in it, I’ve been thinking about how big this piece is, what 30 centimetres looks like, and how I’m going to light this,” Sally says. “But meanwhile, a lot of the artists have been really doing some deep work. It has been a real honour to platform people who have put so much vulnerability and so much of themselves into the work.”
The meaning behind Making Marks
With her background in psychology, Sally did a lot of research around social identity and subcultures, specifically marginalised subcultures, and looking at how niche cultures that aren’t very well known in the mainstream have their own very specific set of values, practices and costumes. “When I was handed this, I wanted to do something around dress and costume and how most sex workers, not all, but the vast majority, have some level of alter ego or a work self.” While the two wardrobe set-up of figures such as Belle de Jour, in the 1967 film of the same name or in the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, are not in any way representative of your average sex worker, Sally does say there is some truth to the idea of “putting on your other self”.
A focus on costume morphed into an open call in order to attract more artists, since Sally wasn’t sure how many artists would actually respond, but also to leave the thematic direction up to the artists themselves. Sally says, “What we ended up with is quite a diverse set of artworks and quite a diverse set of artists as well. So the title Making Marks came out of that because I think mark making as an artist, just the act of putting paint down, putting pencil down, taking a photograph, it’s a radical act in itself. You’re making your mark on the world, you’re putting your voice out there. But also, there’s that overtone of BDSM as well, which was just supposed to be a little pun, but it made sense.”
A lot of the artists exhibiting at Making Marks had also used NUM’s services before. “So it’s been nice to bring the more emergency, crisis side of Ugly Mugs together with the more advocacy, visibility and creative side of things,” Sally says. “It’s been nice for those to have a chance to meet and all merge in one market.”
Hosting Making Marks at the Vagina Museum also held a lot of meaning, as not only is it a fairly well-known venue, but also the perfect space in terms of already being value-aligned. “We know that they’re very pro-woman and pro-LGBTQ, and it’s a very safe, welcoming space,” Sally says. “I don’t think we could have run this just anywhere. So it was really nice to know that we were going into somewhere that was already going to be supportive of what we were trying to do.”
@kittiartxox talks about how inaccessible safe, non-judgmental spaces like this are across most of the country, how they are often limited to big cities, prohibitively expensive, and difficult to take part in – with sex workers bearing the brunt of this limited access and isolation. “I grew up in one of the most deprived towns in the country, where VAWG is rife and sex workers aren’t seen as people,” she says. “And although we can’t realistically comfort ourselves with the idea that extreme misogyny is limited to towns like the one I grew up in, some spaces are safer than others. That’s part of the reason things like this exhibition matter. Projects like this give us opportunities to exist in these spaces, to show our complexity, creativity, and humanity outside of the stereotypes we’re reduced to.
“For me, it was respite from a world that usually judges and rejects me.”
