All you can fuck: stories of Berlin sex workers on display in Florence

Entitled ALL YOU CAN FUCK, Adriana Luperto ’s exhibition scheduled at Crumb Gallery in Florence from March 8 to April 8, 2021. The exhibition is meant to be a reflection on the stories and horrors that sex workers working in the low-cost brothels of Berlin and Germany are forced to endure every day. In fact, the title refers to the name by which flat-rate brothels are commonly known in Germany, which are available to men seeking sex for a fee, and in which, in addition to food, for 90 130 euros, it is possible to “consume” the sex workers, girls who are also forced into dozens of relationships a day, from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. A kind of “all you can eat” of sex, in short.

Through 15 watercolors on paper, Adriana Luperto intends to turn a spotlight on this reality. “I read books, talked to women who have been prostituted, listened to almost horror stories about the life they were forced to live,” the artist says. “What we know about the commodification of a woman’s body is nothing in the face of the enormity of reality. I didn’t want to bring all that back-I wanted to show their beauty, their sensuality, which is there, always, no matter what.”

The issue of prostitution is much debated. In Italy, closed houses have not existed since 1958, and in Europe we find various models of regulation and legalization of prostitution. Many large cities have red-light districts and dating houses, but all this still has not helped to stop sex trafficking, which is still a problem throughout Europe. Luperto has been working on these issues for more than a year: in his works, although the artist speaks of horror and commodification, there is no denunciation or judgment intended. “Yet,” writes Rory Cappelli in the critical text, “for Luperto, paid sex is always something snatched, something a woman would never give if she were not forced into it: by misery, by one’s personal history, by the belief that it is freedom to dispose of one’s body as one sees fit, by the violence of trafficking, the trafficking of women, a multifaceted phenomenon that is extremely ductile in changing tactics and methods to avoid being detected and that is spreading like a cancer without a cure.”

Among the watercolors, there is the story of The Little Girl, leaning against an ajar door, where the innocence of childhood not yet affected by the cruelty of life hovers, in Pause there are women sitting by the roadside waiting, there are Nigerian women walking with their backs to the backdrop of a bruised sky, there is also a glimpse into the 1930s with three women in guepierre and bare breasts, and then again the large-scale work ALL YOU CAN FUCK, in which in a red-tinged room a series of girls gather half-naked, almost in the pews of a church, ready to begin the night. In these paintings, the figure of the man is a presence/absence, he is almost always missing or rather, we find him from behind, defiladed, a mute spectator even if in fact he is the real protagonist which, within the exhibition, sound editor Francesca Sandroni evokes with a sound installation. In the catalog, in addition to the text about the exhibition, we find two interviews conducted by Rory Cappelli and Anna Maria Liguori, two testimonies, true stories, of a Nigerian girl and a Romanian girl forced into prostitution.

ALL YOU CAN FUCK will be open until April 8. To visit the exhibition, reservations are recommended at 347 3681894. Adriana Luperto, born in Salento, has always lived intertwining different work activities with a passion for art and painting. At the age of 21 she moved to Milan. In 1989 during a trip to China, she stopped for a month in Shanghai and took lessons from a local master, with whom she studied and explored the traditional technique of watercolor on rice paper. In the early 1990s he worked steadily on set designs, murals and installations in Lugano, in collaboration with a Swiss set designer/actress and a Puerto Rican graphic designer. Since 2000 he has exhibited in several solo shows in Milan, looking for places outside the exhibition circuits for his works: backyards of houses, bars, nightclubs. In 2005 he collaborated with singer-songwriter Pia Tuccitto illustrating the booklet of her CD, Un segreto che. Also in 2005 he exhibited in Bologna in the Video Freccia event, and later, in November of the same year at MaKìa. In 2007 he participated as part of the Venice Biennale in 13×17 Padiglione Italia, an initiative curated by Philippe Daverio and Jean Blanchaert (AA.VV., 13×17, 1000 artists for an eccentric investigation of art in Italy, Rizzoli catalog). In 2009 he exhibited first in Milan in the exhibition titled di là, together with Antonella De Simone, at the historic local Cicip Ciciap and then in Lecce, at the Cortenumero9 gallery. Between 2014 and 2016 he worked on a cycle of large-format acrylics entitled La solitudine dell’amore (The Loneliness of Love), whose catalog was published by VandAepublisher in 2017 (preface by Rory Cappelli of La Repubblica). Since 2016 she has been living between Lecce and Florence, and after working in different fields (from the world of audio and lighting for entertainment, to design to the world of catering) she decided to devote herself completely to art.

Image: Adriana Luperto, All you can fuck (2020; watercolor on rice paper, 58x82 cm)

All you can fuck: stories of Berlin sex workers on display in Florence

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